The Poacher

THE POACHER

by

H E BATES

JONATHAN CAPE
THIRTY BEDFORD SQUARE
LONDON

FIRST PUBLISHED 1 935
SECOND IMPRESSION I935
NEW EDITION, TYPE RESET, 1 946
REPRINTED, JUNE 1 95 1

FIRST ISSUED IN THE EVENSFORD EDITION 1 953
REPRINTED I960

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY J AND J GRAY, EDINBURGH
BOUND BY A W BAIN AND GO LTD , LONDON

CONTENTS

PAGE

PART

I

YOUTBE

7

PART

II

THE MURDER

8i

PART

ni

THE LAND

145

PART

IV

THE NEW CENTURY

173

To SAM

PART I

YOUTH

CHAPTER I

I

The Wind blew straight up the river valley It had
JEreshened from the north-east the direction of the sea
Sudden gusts of ram were coming down with it^ light icy
rain that was a httle heavier than a sea-mist and a little
lighter than snow

Luke Bishop stood on the river-path, staring at the water
The ram was freckling the water-surface finely, and the
wind, blowing agamst the current, startled it here and
there into a frenzy of little waves They were like ripples
of dark ice that repeatedly melted and froze and dissolved
agam mto the flow of the stream Luke stood with his head
down He was quite still He seemed fascinated by the
rain on the water and the endless rippling and smoothing
of the soundless little waves

All the time the river-keeper was watching him Luke
saw it, without moving, from the corner of his eyes His
stare at the water was a mere pretence He saw in reahty
neither the nver nor the rain, but only the keeper, standing
farther upstream, half-concealed by a bush of hawthorn,
beyond the bridge He had been aware of the keeper
for some time Now he wondered if the keeper, m turn,
knew that he was aware And he stood still, a httle
apprehensive, trying to make up his mind But the keeper
did not stir

Fmally Luke walked on, moving with a casual slouch,
turning up his jacket collar with one hand Along the
river, beyond the keeper, a sohtary heron had been
flapping slowly above the white flocks of seagulls and the
shallow patches of flood water It began to come down-

9

THE POACHER

stream, flapping heavily into the ram Luke hfted his
head to watch it as though m abrupt alarm, ignormg the
keeper altogether

The tack did not work The keeper continued to stand
with steadfast patience, hidden by the bush, waiting The
heron passed overhead Luke turned to watch its flight
down the river, his back to the keeper, his eyes on the bird
until It had passed from sight And again when he turned
to walk on, the keeper was still there His very motion-
lessness was a sort of hostihty Luke continued to walk
on, coming to the bridge at last Once on the bridge he
was safe Loungmg on the stone parapet he took up an
attitude of sprawhng contempt, half-challenging the keeper
to move or show himself But again nothing happened
And now, from the bndge, the keeper looked suddenly
ridiculous, the bush no longer hiding him completely,
his head bent in discomfort against the mcreasing rain
Half-taking off his cap Luke pulled it sharply back
on his head agam with a slick gesture of defiance A
moment later, leaning over the parapet, he saw the dim
reflection of both the bush and the keeper in the stream
He spat at them and walked on

Not hurrymg, he walked away up the meadow-lane
The giant sloe-bushes on either side broke the force of
ram and wind He walked on the ridges of cow-path,
movmg with the same supple slouch as ever, takmg three
cow-ridges at a single stade He was a spare youth, tall
and rather raw His arms were long and swung loosely m
tune with the slouching stade of his legs His face was
bony, the skin sallow, the cheeks hollowed by quick grow-
mg There was something secretive and arrogant m his
face, somethmg a bit gipsyish, at once wild and reflective
His eyes, a soft grey, almost melancholy, were very quick,
never stiU, flickermg gently m reflection and glancing
about 2ind behmd him, with almost shifty expectancy, as

10

YOUTH

though he went in perpetual fear of someone following
him

He went up the lane without haste, the ram not troubling
him Once he became stock-still in the cow-track Some-
thing dark had moved across a space of sky above a dip
in the low fields But a moment later he moved on again
It was nothing— a pigeon or jackdaw hastemng to catch
Its flock— and he did not even trouble to follow the flight,
his eyes losing in a second their look of alert excitement

Later, half-way up the lane a herd of cows was slush-
ing down, after milking, their breath foggy in the dim
November air, and he stood aside, m the hedgerow, to let
them pass The cowman, squinting against the ram and
tapping his sluddered leggings with his cow-stick, halted
to speak

H count the bums are in again, Bish,^ he said
^Ah^’

^ I seed yer mother and the gals carrying the chairs out
under the tree ’

^That’ll be a change,’ Luke said

He stood in the hedgerow, not moving and unconcerned,
smiling a httle with the same irony as he spoke, until the
last cow with Its misty cloud of breath had gone past him
and the cowman had followed it Standing in the hedge,
on the right bank, he could see the ram coming like icy
vapour out of the colourless horizon From that point the
river-valley looked like a solitary shallow furrow driven by
a careless share across a vast flat field, the river a dribble
of grey water turning and vanishing into a distance that
was flat and almost treeless Though here and there in the
valley odd pollard-willows gleamed hke reddish com on
the patches of marshland

When the cows and the cowman had vanished beyond a
twist in the lane Luke walked on agam And turning the
last bend m the lane, by the stone walls of the first houses,

IX

THE POACHER

he came suddenly upon the scene the cowman had stopped
to describe

There, on the patch of grass under the great walnut that
overshadowed the house, his mother was piling the odd
bits of the family furniture He gnnned to see her emerge
from the house bearmg a mattress on her head, slithering
and staggermg with the weight of it as she crossed the wet
grass Now and then she half-turned to swear at some
mvisible figure m the house behind and to call on the Lord
for help a moment later, and the words were so famihar
to him that he could have said them for her
‘Ah' you damned old skinflint' Wouldn’t let me keep
me only decent mattress out o’ the rain, not you, would
you'’ God love and help us, I did think we’d got through
’8 1 without this agam God love and help us ’

Throwing down the mattress on the deal kitchen table
and sweanng still at that invisible figure and calling on
the Lord again a moment later, she stood and re-piimed
the hair that the wind and the mattress had tangled across
her gipsyish face like a black horse-mane
Pmmng the last strand of hair and lifting her head, she
saw Luke She came across the green to him in a burst of
rage and anguish, her red elbows uplifted sharply above
her head as though to strike him
‘God A’mighty,’ she broke out, ‘where’ve joa been all
day'”

‘What’s a matter^’ he said, soft and ironical ‘What’s
a matter^ ’

She too became ironical ‘We ain’t out m the street
again, are we'” she said ‘Oh' no Oh' no’

‘Summat afresh,’ he said ‘Ain’t Dad about'”

‘Dad about’’ All her fury and impatience broke out
agam ‘Dad about' I ain’t seen your Dad smce last
mght And don’t want He’s just as likely to be in quod
somewhere as not ’

12

YOUTH

‘Don’t you believe it ’

‘Bah’’ She began to move away in disgust ‘You’re
every mite as bad as he is ’

A moment later she was back agam He had not moved
and was grinning sofdy

‘Give me a hand with the bed,’ she urged, ‘afore I wipe
that gnn off your face ’

He followed her without speakmg, still grinmng And
as he listened to her complainmg recital about the ways
of the Lord and the bums in the house he tried to remember
how many times they had been turned mto the street that
year But he had given it up before he reached the door
Stooping to go through the doorway he heard the voices
of his two sisters talking and then laughing together, in
soft enjoyment at something, m an upstairs room The
almost empty house echoed forlornly with the sounds His
mother had gone up the bare wooden stairs in haste, two
steps at a time, and following her he heard her voice
uplifted in angry chastisement

‘ Get off that bed • My beds am’t fer you to lounge on
Get off It, I tell you ' ’

He reached the upstairs landing and went into the room
from which her voice was coming
The room was empty of furmture except for a black
iron bed-frame pushed back agamst the wall Two men,
the bums, were standing awkwardly near the bed, which
his mother was already dismantlmg She was unscrewing
the irons and clattering them down on the bare floor-
boards with the same angry and increasing emphasis as
she put into the words she threw at the men
‘If you were men at all you’d give me a hand Out of
my way If you won’t do nothing don’t stop folks as
would God love us and help us, you make my blood boil,
you make my blood boiV'

‘No hurry, missus ’

13

THE POACHER

‘No hurry’’ She clattered the bed-irons together on
the bare boards with fury ‘ No hurry ' ’ Her hands made
helpless gestures above her head and with her straggling
gipsyish hair Speechless, she seized a bundle of bed-irons
and steered her way with them through the bedroom door
and downstairs, the irons clanking together with hollow
sounds that echoed through the empty house Half-way
down her voice broke out again with its old shrillness and
fiiry

‘And, by God, if you gals don’t do something I’ll limb
ye'*

In the bedroom the two daughters, standing by the
window looking over the back-garden with its wintry
apple trees and its waste of dark earth, laughed at the
sound of her voice

‘Sal don’t care,’ said a man

‘All the same if Sal did,’ said the elder girl

‘Ah' you needn’t go We’ll stay with you,’ he said

‘What'” she flashed ‘Now the bed’s gone'”

The two men laughed, and the girl looked at them with
a kind of pitying contempt, her big languorous eyes, very
dark, moving slowly up ajid down, her mouth twisted
into an iromcal half-smile The younger sister half-turned
and stood with her back to the window, softly scratchmg
her throat with her left hand There was something aristo-
cratic and challenging in the dark faces of them both, their
very mdolence arrestmg and passionate When they
lowered their eyes and lifted them slowly again the two
men were caught up m their fascmation, but after that
slow stare had prolonged itself a moment or two the men
would grow mexphcably confused, their eyes flickering,
as though they wanted to escape its nch contempt
Luke began to pack together the remaining bed-irons,
taking no notice of the men and his sisters He coidd hear
his mother’s voice upraised in lament to someone on the

14

YOUTH

green outside One of the bums had some apples m his
pockets and began to take them out, one by one, shining
their crimson skins on his jacket sleeve

'Like applet’ he called to the younger sister
She nodded without ceasing the slow soft scratching of
her neck, and without speaking He chose a bright apple,
gave It a last polish on his sleeve and a last look of scrutmy,
and then tossed it over to her She caught it effortlessly m
her left hand, against her breast, without a sign of thanks
except the sulky flash of her black eyes She made no
effort to begin eating, only turning the apple endlessly
round and round with her sallow fingers m its resting-
place between her breast and her arm
'Like apple, SaP’

'I would,’ she said

He chose an apple, as he had done for the younger girl,
pohshing It on his sleeve and scrutmizing it m readiness
to throw It

'Don’t you know how to give an apple to a lady^’ the
girl said suddenly

He half-opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off,
satirically

'Showing your strength ’ She was silent for a moment,
her eyes filled with relentless contempt for him 'Now
behave yourself,” she said at last, 'and bring it ’

He walked across the room, meekly, to give her the
apple She stood with her right hand outstretched, half-
arrogantly, waiting for it He put the apple into her hand,
trying to smile, but her eyes never lost for a single moment
their look of scorn, and he turned away at last humiliated
Leaning back against the bedroom wall he took out two
other apples, one for himself and the other for his mate,
and they began eating
'Am’t my brother good enough^’ said Sal
Luke was unscrewing the last joints of the bedstead and

15

THE POACHER

setting the frame against the wall Humiliated, the bum
took out another apple and held it out to him
‘Keep It,’ Luke said

The bum stood in uneasy humility, an apple in each
hand, miserable m the arrogant sight of the two girls and
their brother

‘That’ll teach you to mmd your big manners,’ said Sal
By the wmdow the younger girl raised the apple to her
lips, rubbing its skm against her own with a curiously
maddening languor
‘Manners,’ she said m soft contempt
Her voice stung the bailiff’s man with sudden anger
‘ I’ve had enough ' ’ he shouted suddenly ‘ Out of here '
Get that bed downstairs afore I throw it Every damn
stick out of the house in five mmutes or I throw it out ' ’
He perceived at last that the girls, with the same soft
almost surly contempt as before, were laughing at him
‘Yes, you too’’ he blustered ‘You too’’

‘We’ve seen you before,’ said Sal

‘And you’ll see me agam • ’ he warned her

‘Not if I know it ’

She had only to open her mouth to make him ndiculous
And seeing the two sisters laughing at him with then old
silent, unperturbed contempt, he burst out wildly
‘Poachers* Nothmg but a damn lot o’ poachers ’

The words as if by magic brought the mother upstairs
again, with scrambhng angry steps She came mto the
room still trymg to pm up her wild hair, her voice chal-
lengmg the men

‘Who said that about poachers^ Who said it^’

‘I didn’t,’ smd the other bum

The two gnls broke mto soft mvoluntary laughter and
the mother drew herself up against the first man, chastismg
him with her shrill, ugly, devastatmg voice
‘Another word about poachers m this house and I’ll

i6

YOUTH

skin you ^ Who did you ever see m this house that was a
poacher^ ’

^Everybody knows Buck Bishop/ the man began
‘Buck Bishop*’ she said ironically ‘Buck Bishop^ I
never heerd talk of him Not once I know Nathaniel
Lucas Bishop That am’t him perhaps*^ But not Buck
Bishop I never heerd talk of him m all my born days ’
‘Everybody knows—’ the bum persisted
‘Do you mean Nathaniel Lucas Bishop/ she flashed,
‘or don’t you^’

As she waited for her answer the girls began to laugh
again, making him a fool, and suddenly he made an angry
gesture and gave it up

‘I never meant nothmg,’ he said
She had left the room almost before he had spoken, Luke
following her a moment later with the bed-frame, clatter-
ing downstairs

The bum, churlish, signalled to the two girls to be gone
too ‘ Out of It,” he said ‘ Come on ’

Almost before he had spoken and before the girls could
think of replying the mother was back from the next
bedroom, carrying m her hands the family Bible, a great
black book with brass clasps and gilded leaves She came
in with the old downright air of mdignation, the Bible
giving her also a sort of righteous ferocity The bum began
to look uneasy and mtimidated before she spoke

‘My gals ’ll go when they’re ready,’ she told him ‘D’ye
hear that^’

‘It’ll be dark before they’re ready,’ he said
‘Don’t fret yourself*’ she cried ‘I’ve got a candle I
ain’t in such a state to be gone, if you are ’

‘I got orders to—’

‘And don’t chelp me^ By God, if I hadn’t the Lord’s
book in my hands * ” she cried
She half-lifted the great book with a swift gesture that

B 17

THE POACHER

made him start away from her The two girls laughed,
aloud this time, richly The mother made a second gesture
of anger with the big Bible, wammg him for the last time
‘Ye can thank your damn stars this is the Book of Godi’
before going out of the empty bedroom and down the
already half-dark stairs

Under the walnut tree Luke had packed the bed-frame
with the rest of the furniture and was waiting, undecided
what to do, when she came out of the house towards him
in the thickening rain

‘Well,’ he said, ‘what do we do now^’

He was lolhng, careless, with his back against the great
tree, out of the rain The casualness of his voice and his
attitude maddened her at once She half-lifted the Bible
with the same swift gesture as in the bedroom, as though
she would strike him

‘And if you weren’t so big,’ she said, ‘I’d leather
jyoa’’

They stood looking at each other with brief antagomsm
And standing there, m silence, he became for the first
time reaUy conscious of the mcreasiug rawness of the thm
ram and the darkness The rain had settled hke particles
of frost on his mother’s black dress and hair and was
dnftmg icily down through the tree’s bare branches He
did not need to be told

‘We’ll be out here all mght, under the tree, if you don’t
do summat qmck ’

He stood trying to think of some suggestion
‘You go up,’ she said at last, ‘and see your Aunt
Hannah Tell her—’

‘That’s no good ’

‘Will you go up and do as I say and tell her—’

‘You can’t turn her ’

‘You want to argue, don’t you^’

‘I ain’t argumg It’s no use—’

i8

YOUTH

‘You want to make me stop out here and get this Bible
wet, that’s all, don’t you^ Now will you listen to me for
once and go up and tell her—’

They argued briefly there under the tree before her
voice grew desperate in its exasperation, and he relented
As he walked away, without a final word, his last sign a
shrug of his shoulders, she called after him

‘ She’s your Dad’s own sister and you’re own km to her,
tell her that—’

But he had heard the words so often that he did not
need to hsten Walkmg more qmckly than before he went
up into the town street, keeping close to the houses and
the high walls of the big gardens

Once, hearmg sounds, he half-turned and looked back
He could see nothing, but the soimds were repeated agam
They were dull thuds of sounds as though his mother, her
patience exhausted, were brmging down the Bible, at last,
upon someone’s head

Darkness was coming on rapidly and the ram was in-
creasmg as he went on, and hghts of pub-fires were be-
ginning to flicker up behind the wet windows

2

As Luke went up the High Street of Nenweald to the
town Square, m the falling darkness, walkmg with un-
conscious fiirtiveness, occasionally half-looking backward,
as though suspicious of someone following him, he re-
called the words his mother had said under the walnut
tree ‘I ain’t seen your Dad since last mght And don’t
want ’ Reachmg the Square, he paused, considenng them,
making up his mind a moment later to go up mto The Bell
yard to see if his father were there He could see the fire
in the bar-parlour flickering up behind the lattice-curtains

19

THE POACHER

But going across the Square he recalled m turn some words
of his father’s ‘If I am’t about, I am’t about D’ye see^
I can take care of myself’ He retraced his steps at once
slipping through the back entries behind the old houses of
the Square, always half-glancing backward, until he came
to the chapel yard where his aunt lived It was already
qmte dark, and m the httle cul-de-sac the wmd tore
round and round with bitter force, rattlmg the iron chapel
lamp, the ram hke ice He was glad to be inside the house,
m the dark stone passage, holding the door by its big brass
knob while he called a greeting
‘Anybody about^’

The strong deep voice of his aunt answered him at
once ‘Come m I thought it was your great slommacking
feet ’

He went mto the room from which the voice came His
aunt was hghtmg a candle at the fire, the shadow of her
bent body balloomng up across the walls and dying down
as the candle-wick caught the flame and petered out agam
‘Sit you down,’ she said, not turning her back
He stood awkwardly, waiting In a moment the candle-
flame burned up and she stretched up and set the candle-
stick on the high mantelpiece above her head
Turning at last, she found him stiU standing
‘Ah, sit down,’ she urged

He still stood up He wanted to tell her his business and
have done ‘ I ought to be gettmg back,’ he said
‘I’ll get a botde of wme,’ she said, ‘if you can rest your-
self a minute ’

‘I ought to be getting back,’ he said
But she had already left the room and was back again,
carrying a black wme-bottle and wiping its neck on the
hem of her purple underskirt, before he had decided
whether to sit down or not Agam, as she reached down the
wme-glasses from the cupboard by the fireplace, she urged

20

YOUTH

him to sit down, but he took no notice of her, only repeating
the old excuse uneasily ^ I ought to be getting back ’ She
made tit-tattling sounds of disgust From the high mantel-
piece the yellow candlelight, pouring straight down, made
her face seem very hke some very old nusshapen gourd,
the light finding and deepening its mfinite cracks and
wnnkles and richemng the corn-coloured skin It was a
masculine face, the forehead square and dominating, the
nose straight and long, the fleshy underlip hanging m a
nch sullen pout Whenever she moved she gave her head
a senes of rapid shakes, as though in sharp impatience or
disapproval of something, her jet ear-nngs trembhng and
flashing on then spidery silver chains like dark elderberries
as she did so Her hair, as black as her ear-rings and as
shiny, was plaited into a pigtail that was curled back,
almost on the crown of her head, mto a thick rosette When
she stood straight up, very tall and momentarily still, she
looked extremely handsome and resolute, the endless
wrinkles very impressive, the rosette of hair fine and
dominating Now and then she blew her nose with power-
ful snorts on a large red handkerchief which she kept in
the folds of her underskirts, the air sweetish with the snuff
she spilt down the silky front of her dress As she poured
out the wine she kept glancing at Luke, very sharply,
urging him to sit down again And finally, when she had
given him his wine, he sat down in a chair by the big
mahogany table, warming the coldish wme in the cup of
his two hands

The ram pelted as hard as hail on the windows as she,
too, sat down on the opposite side of the fire

‘It’s a bad night,’ he said

She was half-draining her glass m a single dnnk as he
spoke

‘It’s always a bad night,’ she said very quickly as she
ceased dnnkmg, ‘for the rabbits ’

21

THE POACHER

He sat m uneasy silence, not drinking, looking at his
wine and the firelight showing up, a brilliant claret,
through the glass He had sat there too often, bearing a
request from his mother for the loan of a pinch of tea or a
shilling, loans that he knew would never be repaid, not to
feel that she half-knew, aheady, why he had called to see
her

^The wine’s a drop o’ good,’ he said at last, drinking
in order to break the uneasiness of the silence
‘You got the elderberries yourself,’ she said
‘Did Ah* I remember ’

There was another silence after his voice had ceased,
and then her own voice destroying it
‘Don’t tell me the bums are in again,” she was saying
‘Don’t tell me that tale agam ’

He drank and hcked the wine uneasily from his lips
‘That’s about the drift on it,’ he said
She regarded him in a contemplative silence of disgust,
alternately lickmg her lips and pursuing them, as though
to find some word that would fit her displeasure
‘You’re a fine lot,’ she cried at last
‘I came in to—’

‘A bad, poaching, shifty lot,’ she went on, relentless and
unheedmg ‘And I’m almost tired of saying it A bad,
poaching, shifty lot ’

‘I was—’

‘And a bad, ungrateful lot on top of that * ’ she went on,
raising her voice a little to cry him down ‘And I’m done
and finished with you ’

He did not speak

‘What did I tell you last time^’ she said
He had nothing to say

You know what I told you,’ she said, ‘well enough
You know ’

She reached for the winc-bottle with a gesture of angry

22

YOUTH

finality that was a little dramatic, and wrenching out the
cork filled up his half-empty glass
‘I was—’ he began to say

‘I don’t want to hear it,’ she said ‘I’m done and
fimshed with you I don’t want to hear it ’

She screwed the cork into the wme-bottle and made it
tight with a sharp blow from the palm of her hand A
second later she unscrewed it agam and refilled her own
glass hastily, making noises of disgust at having forgotten
It and then at spiUmg the wine on the glassy surface of the
mahogany table

‘I’m a fool,’ she said, wipmg away the wine with her
handkerchief ‘ I’m a fool to sit here and listen to you at all ’
‘I told her it was no good,’ he began ‘I told her—*

‘I know, I know,’ she said

The gentleness and affection she had been keeping back
and hiding with her blustering voice escaped at last
‘Drink your wine,’ she said, ‘while you have the chance *
He sat back in his chair, at rest, his trouser-legs drying
clammily in the heat of the fire He drank his wine After
a silence she began to talk to him, more gently
‘When did this happen^” she said
‘I don’t know,’ he said ‘I was along the nver— ^

‘For a change,’ she flashed ‘Where was your father^’
‘I don’t know ’

‘I dare say I could tell you,’ she said
He said nothing and she gave up the conversation
abruptly She sat stanng into the fire, one hand out-
stretched, her glass held on her knee by the other He sat
looking at her He had never got down to the truth about
her There were rumours that she was the bastard child
of his father’s family He didn’t know He knew that she
had married a well-to-do farmer who had left her widowed
and childless, still a young woman, within a year, and that
as long as he had Imown her she had hved in the house

23

THE POACHER

in the chapel yard, surrounded by the heavy farm fur-
niture, the old hunting pictures and the many old books
on land-cultivation and horse-doctonng Time and
seclusion had helped to make her a little mysterious ‘You
can’t bottom her,’ his father would say She could read
and write, and had money m the bank at Orcester, five
miles up the valley, and also a lawyer there She drove off
to see the lawyer once a month, hiring a trap from The
Bell across the Square and dnving herself, winter and
summer She wore for the occasion a mannish shooting
hat with a pheasant’s feather sticking up from the crown,
the hat and the feather both askew as if she were drunk
There were, m fact, times when she came home from the
lawyer-visits looking as if she had come to blows with him,
and Luke had heard stones of mighty arguments on the
corn-laws and land-reforms and the church that she would
hold over her dinner beer m the Orcester pubs with any-
one who happened to be there It had always been one of
her wishes, and was still, that Luke should go into the
lawyer’s office But his father would not hear of it ‘God
a-mighty, a lawyer^’ he said ‘A bloody canker' A liax'*
I should look well, I think ’ And this, for her, was the end
of It Afterwards, when his father, repenting, had gone
back to say that he had changed his mind, it was too late,
‘No, no,’ she said, ‘the farther you keep away firom the
law. Buck Bishop, the better ’

As he sat there, watching her and thinking of her, he
thought also of his mother, standing with the derehct
furniture under the walnut tree

He dramed his glass ‘Well, this don’t get us another
shop, does it^’ he said

‘What’s your hurry^ ’ she said, seemg him rise ‘ What’s
your hurry'*’

She was standing up too, holdmg the wme-bottle, her
hand on the cork in mvitation

24

YOUTH

‘If I don’t go,’ he said, ‘she’ll be up here after me ’

‘Go on then,’ she said truculently ‘Go on ’

She reached up to the mantelpiece for the candle to
light him to the door, and then, holding it in her hand,
half-paused, as though hoping he would change his mind
But he said nothing, deliberately And she marched off
suddenly mto the passage, he following her and turning up
his jacket collar She began to murmur something more
about ‘I’m sick of it, you fair urge me ’ when she
opened the door The sound of rain rose instantly to a
watery thunder and the candle-flame was ripped from the
wick like a feeble flag before her hand could guard it
Above the sound of the ram came also another sound, the
noise of wheels ‘What the nation’s that^’ she said He
half-stepped into the ram to look, and down the pebbled
chapel yard he could see the drenched figures of his
mother and his sisters pushing a hand-cart piled high
with furniture Turning to speak to Aunt Hannah he
found her no longer there and above the noise of the rain
and the wheels rattling the pebbles he could hear her,
back m the room, muttering with a kind of resigned
complaint

‘WeU, if they’re here, they’re here, I suppose ’

Late that night, in the bedroom she had given him next
his mother and sisters, he stood listening When he could
no longer hear from below all the sounds— the pad of
stockinged feet, the sighs, the creak of bed springs, the
coughing— of his aunt retirmg, he stood stock-still in the
darkness of the strange room, waiting He could feel the
silence of the room as though it were tangible From the
soft dnbblc of eaves and gutters and sound of the wind
under the house-thatch he thought the ram had ceased
He stood for a long time, quite motionless He had turned
up his jacket collar and had knotted his black neck-
muffler above it And standing there with his face

25

THE POACHER

half-lowered he was as much a part of the darkness
as the dribble of raindrops outside was part of the
silence

It was only when he heard at last the approach of foot-
steps m the chapel yard that he moved at all He raised
his head The footsteps came up the yard, paused, turned
and retreated agam He listened for a single second longer
before going out of the room downstairs and into the street
He moved very quickly Outside he paused for one
moment to listen to the sound of ram dripping from the
roof, to the wmd roaring westwards, and the retreating
footsteps As he hstened the footsteps stopped and then
in a moment went on again

Movmg qmckly he followed them out of the dark town

3

Two miles out of the town Buck Bishop halted on the
soft grass of the roadside and waited for his son As his
own footsteps ceased Luke’s footsteps paused also, but only
momentarily, and then came on again The distance
between son and father had kept constant, at about fifty
yards, never varying Only occasionally Luke had paused
to hsten, his father’s footsteps so quiet on the grass that at
mtervals the sound of them eluded him altogether
When his father finally halted Luke lost for a moment
or two his sense of distance and walked the last ten yards
uncertainly, unable to see his father m the mtense dark-
ness

‘Are y’ there^’ he whispered at last
‘God, can’t ye keep qmet^ I thought it was the thun-
derm’ imhtia coming up the road ’

His father began to walk on agam and Luke followed
him They contmued to walk m single file, not speaking

26

YOUTH

But now they walked more slowly, occasionally halting to
listen for a brief moment, but never speaking The quiet-
ness of the big man was amazing He moved like a black
ghost, the extremely soft soxmd of his light footsteps
covered by the sound of rainless wind

Like this they went on for another mile Very shortly
the road turned to the left, and then at a sharp angle to
the right, going downhill Isolated ash trees broke the
level of the roadside, more occasionally still little triangular
copses of oak trees The hedges were stunted The wind
was harsh and stinging as it came unbroken across the bare
land

Very soon they saw odd hghts in the hollow beyond
them, and for a little longer they kept to the road Now
there were no hedges at all in the roadside And then,
abruptly, Luke’s father stopped and stood tense, as though
he had heard something Luke stood still, alert and tense
also Suddenly his father left the road and began walking
across the hedgeless land, his feet as soundless on the wet
stubble as they had been on the grass

Luke followed him, saying nothmg, at the same un-
changing distance as before The stubble field ended and
the hedge began agam A narrow green lane ran down a
sharp slope from the stubble lane, and uncut hedges of
hawthorn meeting each other in the wind overhead At
the foot of the lane, beyond a gate, a hght was shining,
the window squares orange, the lacy curtain-shadows clear
in the darkness Luke’s father pushed open the gate,
soundlessly, and they went through, walking quietly past
the shadowy shapes of a haystack and an outhouse or two,
haltmg at last under the whitewashed walls of the httle
pubhc-house

They stood for a moment by the back door to hsten
before going in The wintry branches of two stimted
apple trees clapped together with dry sounds m the wmdy

27

THE POACHER

darkness, but there was no other sound except the noise
of the wind, roaring far overhead
In another moment they were mside the warm beer-
smelling back parlour of the pub They closed the door
as soundlessly and swiftly behind them as they had closed
the gate in the yard outside
A little woman stood m the room waiting for them, her
lips tight, her whole attitude arrested She continued to
stand like that, alert and listening, not attemptmg to
speak or move, until Luke’s father had spoken
‘All right,’ he said softly

She left the room at once, coming back in less than a
mmute with two jugs of beer She set the beer on the
white-scrubbed table where the glass oil lamp stood
The two men took up the beer-jugs and drank, still
standing

While they were drinking the woman left the room
agam She came back very shortly with two plates of
bread and cheese The two men were sitting by the fire,
relaxed

‘Well^’ said Buck For the first time he spoke normally,
his voice above a whisper
‘You’re late,’ she said
‘Good old Poll,’ he said

He leaned back on the scrubbed settle, sucking the beer
softly off his thick black moustache, regarding the httle
woman with a half-smile of adimration He was a man
between forty and fifty, in the pnme of his strength
Beside the htde compact woman and the spare half-
developed figure of his son he looked extraordmanly
powerful and impressive His long thick legs, tight in
their back trousers, were stretched straight out, the muscles
stiff as bone His coat, a sort of ancient black mormng-
coat with great tail-pockets, was thrown wide open, and
his hands were thrust mto the top of his trousers, in an

28

YOUTH

attitude of easy arrogance, the thumbs left free He had
not taken off his hat It was a cunous-shaped bowler, the
crown very high and the brim curving deep like a helmet,
its blackness softened like the blackness of his jacket-
shoulders with the green of age and weather He wore
it on the extreme back of his head, as though he had for-
gotten It And as he sat there, relaxed, the old tense
attitude of quietness and secrecy seemed foreign to him
He looked so powerful and awkward, sprawled out on the
settle, his face already flushed with the fire and the beer,
that it seemed as if he could never have stirred a yard
without being as conspicuous and noisy as a clumsy bull
But the flesh on his face was tight and fine and his black
eyes, even in the half-sleepy droop of admiration at the
little woman, never lost their look of watchfulness

They sat, he and the woman, as though silently chal-
lenging one another Beside him she was pert, like a robin
against a crow

®WelP’ he burst out at last, 'what about Bradlaugh
now^’

'Bradlaugh * ’ She was stung to instant life, her little red
face lifted in scorn 'Bradlaugh I was ashamed to read it
Ashamed Bradlaugh * ’

He half-sat up, his face glowmg at the prospect of argu-
ment

'Let me tell you—* he began

'You needn’t tell me*” Her quick, bird-like voice cut
him off with fresh scorn 'I don’t want to hear it ’

'Let me tell you,’ he went on, mexorable 'I’ve said it
times anew, and I’ll say it again No finer man lives in
this country to-day No—’

'An atheist,’ she broke in

'The constitutional nght of a country,’ he went on, un-
heeding, 'to enforce any one religion or any religion at
all-’

THE POACHER

‘Religion' I wonder you aren’t ashamed to let the
words pass your hps ’

‘Be damned I’ve told you before, Poll Saunders, and
I’ll tell you again, th’ idea o’ God is all popery and hum-
bug Now listen to me There’s no more a God, I tell you,
than there is—’

‘Then if there’s no God,’ she said in triumph, ‘why do
you argue about Him^ ’

‘I don’t want to argue,’ he said loftily ‘I don’t want to
argue ’

‘Drmk your beer then ’

‘But when I see you,’ he said, shakmg his head, ‘going
about as blind as a bat, at the mercy o’ fartm’ parsons—’

‘ Go on, go on,’ she said softly

‘Behevmg all the humbuggmg tales they like to teU
you—’

‘What tales^’ she broke m quickly ‘What tales^’

‘Look,’ he said, reachmg out for his beer-jug from the
table, ‘look at that humbugging tale about Moses and the
water, the water m the rock Are you going to tell me—’

‘It’s not for me,’ she said, ‘to question the miracles of—’

‘Miracles’’ He leaned forward, without having taken
a drmk, to replace his beer-jug on the table ‘ You’ll be
tellmg me next that Moses m the bull-rushes was a miracle
You’ll be-’

‘I don’t want to hear it,’ she declared ‘I don’t want
to hear it ’

‘No, you don’t want to hear it,’ he cried ‘And why^
Because it’s nght, that’s why ' It’s right ' ’

‘Right or wrong,’ she said, ‘I don’t want to hear it ’

‘And another thing—’ he began

No sooner had he begun to speak than she interrupted
him agam And they went on argmng for another twenty
imnutes or more, crying each other down, while Luke
watched them and listened His father was never so happy

30

YOUTH

as when in an argument Nenweald, like all the towns of
the Nen valley, was a shoemaking town and Bishop him-
self was a shoemaker when he chose to work between his
poaching and his long hours of idleness in his favourite
bars And he was great in argument, driving home his
points by smashing his hammer down on the bench
sending the bright steel tingles and the myriad brass rivets
dancing up and down like sparks And now, refreshed
with the argument and the beer, he looked superb, the
blood rich in his cheeks, his eye jaxmty, the very tilt of his
hat spirited and happ^r, the muscles of his great legs taut
with arrogant life

But abruptly the argument petered out He was stand-
ing up, his beer drained in a single draught The woman
was on her feet, too, expectant The old tense air, full of
alert secrecy, had returned

^ Which way were you going^’ the woman said, her
voice a whisper again
Luke was by the door, waiting
‘Sheldrake spinneys,^ his father said
‘Sheldrake,’ she said ‘That’s a fool’s place ’

‘Why^’

‘They were looking for you there last time You know
that ’

‘Heard anything^’

‘No’

‘That’s all nght then ’

‘But It’s a fool’s place,’ she persisted ‘A fool’s place
Everybody knows Sheldrake You’ll do it once too much ’
He was stuffing the remainder of his bread and cheese
into his pocket, smiling

‘The day they nail me,’ he said, ‘I’ll start and believe
mGod’

‘You’ll need to’’ she flashed
‘ Ah ’ ’ he said softly ‘ I dare say *

31

THE POACHER

Luke had opened the door, very quietly, and his father
and the woman followed him into the dark little passage
that led from the parlour to the bar
‘'You didn’t fimsh your beer, Luke,’ the woman said
^Go and finish it,’ his father ordered ‘'Christ, you may
be glad o’ that Free beer, too ’

Luke slipped back into the parlour to dram his forgotten
beer In a flash his father was bending over the woman,
one arm about her, and she was putting up her soundless
lips to be kissed It was all over in a moment Before
Luke was back from the parlour his father’s hand was
softly raising the latch of the outer door and the wind was
screaming in the gently widening aperture
‘Mmd what fool’s tncks you’re up to,’ said the woman
‘And don’t forget the key ’

She slipped a little key into Buck Bishop’s hand The
door, opened fully a moment later, let in a sudden rush of
the cold night air, and the men slipped out into the public-
house yard, the old restrained miraculous quietness in all
their movements again

‘Be careful at Sheldrake,’ the woman warned them
finally

Bishop paused half-way across the yard to call back in
a devihsh whisper

‘If they’re up there we s’ll give ’em what Bradlaugh
gave the House And you know what that was ’

There was no answer except the swift, quiet closmg of
the door Quite silent, the men walked rapidly across the
pubhc-house yard At the yard-end the half-doors of the
stables stood on the catch and Luke held back the doors
against the wmd while his father entered the stables He
heard the soft shuffling of his father’s feet in the hay on
the stable floor and then the murmur of his voice re-
assunng and quietening the horse Sharp breaths of horse-
flesh and horse urine and the fragrance of hay came out

32

YOUTH

to him, the cold mght-wind dispersing them in a moment
In less than a minute his father reappeared, carrying the
rabbit nets and slipping the ferrets mto the tail-pockets of
his coat In less than another minute the stable doors were
shut again and the men were hastening out of the yard
and away up the slopes of the fields m the unbroken dark-
ness, the light in the public-house behind them already
extinguished

As they hurried m an easterly direction across the dark
fields, the quietness of the big man was agam amazmg
and they did not exchange a single word The land rose
sharply, the wind stronger on the higher ground, and it
was not until they reached the crest of the nse that they
paused at all

They stood for only a second or two, hstemng They
could hear nothmg but the sound of the wind and the
qmet ooze of water filling up the prints their feet had made
in the rainy earth

Gomg on again, they went over the crest of the hill
Down the slope, to the left, a thick belt of trees cut off the
wind They stood for a moment to hsten again, and
hearing nothmg, they started mto the silent activity of
unrolling the nets In the darkness they moved by instinct,
never speaking They unrolled the nets soundlessly, peg-
ging them down by the mere pressure of their thumbs on
short ash pegs which Bishop had devised himself They
worked with great rapidity As soon as the nets were down
Luke crouched against the ground and went from one peg
to another, on his hands and knees, to test them His
father was ready with the ferrets He saw the vague
whitish blur of their bodies before they vamshed into the
earth After the ferrets had vanished there was a curious
silence during which the two men crouched hke runners
The hush was broken by a sudden madness of sound and
motion in the net It was the first rabbit, m its first wild

33

THE POACHER

struggle for escape In a second Luke had silenced it by
seizing the rabbit in his hands In another moment he
had killed it, breaking its neck by striking the skull hghtly
with his hand The rabbit gave a smgle great convulsion
of pam and was dead It was as easy as throwmg a ball
The thought flashed across his imnd that he could not
remember the time when he had not been able to do that
He felt a curious wave of lust and tnumph The thought
and the emotion had scarcely passed before another rabbit
was beginning its wild struggle m the net

Twenty minutes later he was unhookmg the net-pegs
from the ground and foldmg up the nets He stood witib
the nets across his shoulders, listening, while his father
recovered the ferrets The imgutted rabbits lay m a heap
at his feet As he waited he wiped his blood-sticky hani
on his trousers, absently He stood perfectly erect, his
head up to catch the slightest soimds His nerves were
tightened hke wire All the time he could hear nothing
but his father’s soft movements with the ferrets and the
distant surge of the wmd m the bare spinney trees

At last the ferrets were recovered He followed his
father down the hill, carrymg his share of the rabbits
Their bony skulls knocked against his legs as he stiffened
himself agamst the weight and the mchne of the land
Their bodies, ungutted, were a sagging weight m his
hands

Back m the pub-yard, Luke swung back the stable
doors and followed his father mto the stable He could
just make out the dark still shape of a horse and could hear
the soft rustle of hay as his father hid the rabbits m the
fodder-loft He caught the smell of the horse strongly and
the stench of ferret-dung and the mild fragrance of hay

He shut the stable door agam m a second or two and
followed his father across the yard and through the lane
and across the open fields His father did not once speak

34

YOUTH

He walked very quickly, but with the same miraculous
quietness as ever

But finally, a mile farther on, at a path in the wood, he
halted He was stuffing into his mouth the bread and
cheese the woman had given him m the pub He stood
eating ravenously and listening and for the first time he
spoke, his voice thick with the food

‘Make yourself scarce,’ he said

In a moment he had vamshed, without a word, and
Luke walked on agam

It was not until he came downhill into the town at last
that he became conscious for the first time of his extreme
weariness The wind seemed to have increased and was
coming bitterly ofiF the river His hands were stiU sticky
with rabbit-blood and when he opened them to relieve
the contraction of his fingers he could scarcely shut them
again.

CHAPTER II

I

By the following spring the Bishops were living in a new
house, on the edge of the town, in a block of raw bnck
houses that overlooked the river They seemed almost to
have settled down

After the first week or two m the new house they took
in a lodger Bishop, who for a secretive, argumentative
man made friends easily, was never really happy unless
there was a lodger in the house From time to time, in one
of his favourite bars, he would come upon a stranger to
the town, a travelling sawyer or a shoemaker looking for
work, and before the stranger could realize it he would find
himself accepting Bishop’s offer to go home and lodge
with him, won over by Bishop’s swaggering, generous way
of brushing aside all difficulties, of taking it all inevitably
and for granted ‘ Money ^ Put that out of your head
Share with us till you’re settled It makes no odds No
odds at all Some day you’ll do the same for me ’ He
would pay for the stranger’s beer and then, at home, would
order the womenfolk to set out a meal in welcome, he
himself cutting the loaf and the cheese with careless
liberality into generous shces He seemed to take a fancy
to raw young men of large physique It was as though he
saw in them his former self, the self of twenty years before
And within a week he would be concerned for their
physical welfare Did they go m for running^ Or boxing^
If the stranger took no mterest m running or boxmg
Bishop would make it plam, very shortly, that the bed
was no longer available, puttmg the case with the same
swaggermg hberality as before ‘It’s a bit too much for

36

YOUTH

the missus You know how it is^ I wouldn’t have had it
happen for a sovereign But you know how women are^
But if the stranger took an interest m runmng, or boxing
an excited change would come over Bishop He would
behave like a man with a prize dog He would lavish
generous compliments on the stranger and, as he sized
up the length of his arm or the breadth of his chest, he
would remark that he could not help being reminded of
Fitzsimmons ^You’ve got the build all right It’s only a
question of training A month’s training, man, and— ah,
you won’t know yourself when you look in the glass ’

As soon as possible the traimng would begin Bishop’s
excitement would increase when the training started and
he would begin to say that the more he studied the young
lodger the more he could see m him the prospect of a
national champion Invariably the lodger would share
Luke’s bedroom and at five o’clock Luke would hear his
father runmng softly downstairs A httle later he would
hear the clank of buckets and the soft splashing of water
on the stairs and presently his father would burst into the
bedroom, set down two buckets of cold water and drag
the lodger out of bed The lodger, too sleepy to know what
was happening or to protest, would let himself be handled
like a child While Bishop shook him and pummelled him
into a state of wakefulness Luke would drag a tm bath
from beneath the bed, and the lodger, stripped of his shirt,
would stand in it with his arms folded miserably about
him, like a man in a cold trance Bishop would then seize
a bucket, and standing on the bed, proceed to pour the
water over the naked lodger The man would catch his
breath in great gasps of involuntary shock, his hands
groping helplessly, his drenched hair blinding his sleepy
eyes Before he could recover Bishop would leap off the
bed with amazing agility and seize the second bucket and
empty that too over the boxer’s head The man would

37

THE POACHER

give out a brief groan of resignation and relief, the last of
the water would dribble down his limbs into the bath, and
Bishop would force him to come out of the bath and stand
on the bedroom floor On cold spring or winter mornings
the boxer would proceed to prance up and down in a
sudden affectation of agile pleasure, his hands attackmg
the air with vague blows All the time Bishop and Luke
would scourge his body with great sweeps of the towel,
afterwards slapping it, flat-handed, until the sk m was pmk
and vibrant and the chest-hairs crisp again Bishop,
extremely excited, would talk incessantly m his thick soft
voice, giving the boxer advice, encouraging him and
warming him with flattery

While the lodger was dressing, Luke and his father
would remove the empty buckets and the bath downstairs
In the kitchen Bishop would make a pot of tea and the
three men would each drink a cup of unsweetened tea
before gomg out for the early mormng run ‘No sugar*
You’ll get thirsty enough’ Bishop, between the great
gulps of tea, would put on a sort of woollen cardigan
sweater, once white, that had turned a strange dirty
yellow with age and use The boxer would be forced to
put on a sweater too, and in the early stages of the trammg
a jacket or a top coat, with perhaps a scarf or two also
Then the three men would go out for the mommg run
Bishop’s enthusiasm and activity would mcrease as they
trotted along the deserted roads, in the sharp early
mormng air The boxer would be under a strict penalty of
silence, but Bishop would talk as he ran, renewing his
advice and flattery and relating stories of great fights he
had seen He never seemed to lose breath or to feel the
effects of the long mghts of poaching Back in the house
the boxer would be towelled and flesh-gloved down with
great care, but Bishop never even troubled to wipe the
sweat off his own face As a young man he had himself

38

YOUTH

been a great fighter, a notorious terror, with a reputation
that had never died And later m the morning he would
spar with the lodger in the back paddock of The Griffin
in the High Street, showing him the tricks and punches
that had made him locally famous After the sparring the
three men would return to the pub and drink beer or
stout and argue about pohtics or fighting, returmng home
for dinner at midday, the boxer on a diet of imderdone
steaks Bishop charged a trifle extra for steaks ^But
nothing to what they’re worth to you, see^ They’ll mean
all the difference between love-tapping and a knock-out
You can’t beat a steak ’ Wherever he went Bishop would
be accompanied by a small white temer-bitch And
something about the contrast between his huge swaggenng
body and that of the tiny dog seemed incongruous and
touching

During all this there would be no shoemakmg The
little workshop at the bottom of the garden would be shut
up, Its dryish acrid odours of parched leather and wax
turnmg sour and mouldy Working on the out-door
system, fetching his raw materials from the factory and
making up the shoes in entirety and drawing his money
at piece-time rates, Bishop was his own master The
system gave him utter independence But what with the
poaching and the boxmg and odd holidays taken ofi* for
fairs and fox-hunting the work he did was almost negli-
gible Nevertheless he took pride in his craft, his shoes
were sound and beautiful, the individual stitches strangely
delicate for the work of such large hands

Mrs Bishop had no say in the question of work or
lodgers She was at heart a religious woman, slatternly,
loud-mouthed, but in reality subordinate Her life with
Bishop was negligible, yet she was secretly ashamed of it
covering her shame and keeping her touch with a finer hfe
by going to church on Simday and little communions and

39

THE POACHER

meetings on week nights All day, during the week, she
went about in a sackcloth apron, her gipsyish hair in knots
and an old cap of Bishop’s hat-pinned on her head But
on Sundays she was a changed woman Her hair became
severe and neat, her manner subdued and almost contem-
plative Bishop too was changed on Sundays He would
put on a black suit, a large white dicky and a pair of light
brown, squeaky boots And on summer Sunday evenings
after tea he would walk down the garden path to cut him-
self a buttonhole He would stand there and gaze at the
flowers with a curious tenderness, his hands in his trouser-
tops, his large silver watch-cham making two deep loops
as he leaned forward to gaze at the sweet-peas or the white
stocks or the first dahlias, his favourite flowers Finally he
would unclasp his knife and step tenderly on the earth
and cut himself a flower Back in the house, with the
yellow dahlia or the white knot of stock-flowers in his
buttonhole, he would call the little white dog and they
would go off together Bishop would walk with a kind of
easy solemnity, the little bitch at his heels, and together
they would go along the towing path by the river or
through the fields of ripening beans and com There was
something resplendent about him then
It was April, a little after Easter, when the new lodger
arrived Bishop brought him to the new house in the early
afternoon, and the man stood on the doorstep, hesitant,
wiping his feet timorously on the door-sack
‘Ah, come in, come in,’ said Bishop ‘Come in, man ’
The stranger half-entered the kitchen, his hands fiddhng
uneasily with the bxmdle he carried imder his arm He
was extremely tall and lean, with large vacuous blue eyes,
a mere youth And seemg the two girls and Mrs Bishop
washing the dishes at the kitchen sink he was terrified
He was half-sidlmg out of the door when Bishop dragged
him back again

40

YOUTH

'Ah, come m, man, come m God a-nughty, you ain’t
fnt at a couple o’ gads, I know ’

The youth came back mto the kitchen, and the girls,
their dress-sleeves rolled up tight above their fine fore-
arms, stood lookmg at him boldly, without embarrass-
ment

‘This is Jack Reeves,’ said Bishop ‘These are my two
gals, Sal and Hester ’

The two girls said ‘Good afternoon,’ but the youth did
not speak

‘Let’s have a mite o’ dinner, missus,’ Bishop said,
‘qmck ’

Mrs Bishop had not spoken and now she left the dish-
washing without a word and proceeded to lay out plates
and knives and bread and cheese on the bare kitchen
table Bishop seized a knife and began to cut up the loaf
into hberaJ slices, carelessly

‘And Hester,’ he said, ‘get oflF to Maddam’s for a drop
o’ stout A quart ’

For the first time the young man spoke
‘Not for me,’ he said ‘Idon’tdnnk’

Bishop seemed to become embarrassed too
‘Don’t what^’ he said
‘I don’t dnnk ’

‘How’s that^’ Bishop was begmnmg to grow uncertain
about the lodger’s prospects and his voice was half-
aggressive

‘ I got to keep my weight down,’ the youth said
Bishop’s spirits at once returned His voice took on the
old swaggenng enthusiasm of tone
‘Weight^’ he said eagerly ‘What d’ye do^ Fight^’

‘ I run a bit,’ the youth said

Bishop stood back a pace or two and regarded the
young man with cordiahty, making soft self-deprecatory
sounds at the same time

41

THE POACHER

‘And I never seed it/ he said ‘Never noticed it And
if ever a chap could run you can Be God, I can see it by
the way you stan’ still ’

Hester, the younger daughter, had come from the pantry
with a blue-and“white quart jug in her hand, her pinafore
off, and was waiting to fetch the stout for the men She
stood regarding the lodger, quietly

‘Am I to fetch the stout she said

‘When a man’s runninV said Bishop, ‘he don’t wanna
go guzzling stout, my gal ’

The girl looked at the lodger’s thin wrists and face and
his altogether overgrown, sallow body

‘That’s what he wants, something to feed him up,’ she
said

The lodger looked embarrassed again and Bishop began
to protest heavily, but the girl looked straight at the
lodger and spoke

‘Will you have a drop o’ stout if I fetch it^’ she said

‘I don’t drmk,’ he said

‘Will you have it if I fetch it^’ she insisted ‘It’ll do
you good ’

‘If the boy don’t want it, he don’t want it^’ said
Bishop

He half-raised his voice and the young man flushed
miserably, the dark candid stare of the girl and the insistent
and almost aristocratic tone of her voice embarrassing
him deeply

‘You look about worn out,’ she said ‘How far have
you come^’

The next moment the lodger began to cough, the short
dry spasms of coughing draining the colour from his face,
and he could not answer the girl As he coughed he bent
his head, as though to suppress the sound When the
coughmg had ceased and he raised his head again Hester
had vanished, taking the jug with her

42

YOUTH

*Summat went wrong way^’ Bishop asked
* That’s about it/ said the youth His voice was weak
and he seemed relieved to sit down, but Bishop, hacking
the red cheese into thick triangular slices, scarcely noticed
It

'Make yourself at home,’ he said He gazed m medita-
tion at the youth as they sat eatmg the bread and cheese,
his stare half-troubled, as though he were trying to solve
a problem Fmally he half-leapt up from the table m
a spasm of sudden excitement
'Be dalled if I could think who you featured,’ he said
'And now I know Missus*’ He called Mrs Bishop from
the kitchen smk 'Have a good look at the boy Now
who does he feature^’

'I’m sure I don’t know ’

'Ah, woman, look at him, be God, look at him ’

He was extremely excited as she looked the youth up
and down

'He’s a good deal like Moll Ajidrews* boy,’ she said at
last

Bishop made a gesture of supreme weariness, of ironical
resignation

'Moll Andrews’ boy,’ he repeated 'Moll Andrews*—
God a’mighty, where’s Luke^ He’ll know in a minute
Where’s Luke^’

'He’s m the shop,’ she said

'Moll Andrews’ boy,’ he went on, iromcally 'Moll
Andrews’ boy, God a’mighty Why, woman, any kid
could tell you he was the spit of Tim Evans ’

'Evans‘S’ she said vaguely 'Tim Evans^’

'Evans, woman Evans* Champion o’ the Midlands—
the masterpiece of a runner as ever was Make out you
never heard o’ Tim Evans * ’

He suddenly seemed to ignore Mrs Bishop and he laid
his hand half-tenderly on the lodger’s shoulder

43

THE POACHER

^You get the grub down you— I got a portrait of Evans
upstairs 111 fetch it down ’

*Ah, clomp upstairs/ said Mrs Bishop ‘Clomp
upstairs ’

He made a swift gesture with his elbow upraised and
crooked, as though to strike her playfully, and then strode
past her with a royal swagger and went upstairs without a
word, setting down his feet with deliberate heavmess, as
though to mock and infuriate her
As soon as he was gone and before Mrs Bishop could
speak again Hester had returned with the jug of stout
The lodger, seeing her, was overcome again with the old
embarrassment, his face darkening with the sudden rush
of blood Without speaking, the girl set the jug on the
table and then fetched a glass from the pantry and poured
out a glass of the stout and set it before the lodger
He hesitated
‘Dunk it,’ she said

He sat m a painful agony, as though paralysed by her
proximity and her voice and the stare of the three women
as they watched him

‘Dnnk it,’ she said Her voice was soft but inexorable,
her very dark eyes never flickering or changing their ex-
pression of determination ‘Drink it Take a good drink ’
Fmally he drank He lifted the glass slowly, seemed to
hold his breath for a moment and then drank quickly
The three women watched him The soft oak-coloured
beads of stout clung to his thin moustache and he was too
troubled to wipe them away

‘How far have you come^’ said Hester

‘Not far I started from Oxford I was a tapper ’

‘Oxford— that’s a long way ’

Before anyone could speak again the youth was caught
up m a spasm of coughing His face, drained of its colour
as suddenly as before, seemed extraordinarily thin and

U

YOUTH

frail and exhausted But it was all over in a moment and
as soon as the coughing had ceased he drank eagerly of
the stout again

‘That cough’s no good to you,’ Hester said
He made a slight movement with his shoulders, as
though it did not matter

‘I bin sleeping rough,’ he said

The heavy sound of Bishop’s feet on the stairs was re-
newed and the girl turned away with a slight shrug of her
fine shoulders too

‘I thought as much,’ she said

The young lodger and Luke shared the back bedroom,
sleepmg in the same small iron bed The house had been
built on a sharp slope of ground on the edge of the fields
running down to the river, and there were two steps down
mto the little bedroom On the first nights of that spring
Luke, coming home late in the darkness and forgetting the
descending steps, would sometimes miss his footing, his
stockinged feet slipping on the smooth stair-edge, and the
soimd would distract the lodger and sometimes even wake
him from his heavy sleep Occasionally when he woke he
would turn over and begin his dry coughing, which would
go on for perhaps an hour or two, intermittently It
would often be morning before the youths were asleep and
it seemed that no sooner were they asleep than Bishop came
excitedly upstairs with the water-bucket to wake them
again Reeves, the lodger, would wake m a state of physical
fright, as though not quite knowing where he was Stand-
ing naked in the bath he was revealed as even thinner and
more sallow than he appeared in his loose clothes His
nbs and shoulder-blades protruding sharply, made dark

45

THE POACHER

shadows on his pallid skm His legs and thighs were
slimmer and finer than a girl’s, the hair on them ex-
tiemely golden and soft The sudden icy shower of water
would make him gasp in agony, and his body, goose-
skinned and cold, would seem to shrink to an even greater
thinness until Bishop towelled and slapped it to life again
His thinness seemed to both himself and Bishop a great
virtue 'Not an ounce of fat flesh on the boy,’ Bishop
would exclaim 'Feel where you like Feel’ Reeves him-
self seemed also to think of nothing but keeping down his
weight, and the mormng bath and the enthusiastic towel-
ling were like the first ntes of a religious exercise And
out on the roads m the early summer morning sunshine,
It all seemed justified Reeves, so thin and slight, ran more
easily and beautifully than anyone Luke or his father had
ever seen Luke, clad like his father m old trousers and a
yellowish sweater, would act as a pace-maker to Reeves,
and Bishop would time them with a stop-watch over short
distances along the deserted roads

As the summer came on and the breeding season and
the lighter nights made poachmg more difficult the
Bishops spent more and more time with Reeves, training
him for the sports at country fairs in the late summer It
was part of the training to go off for gentle walks along by
the river or into the surrounding country, and sometimes
they would take the field paths to Swmestead where Mrs
Saunders kept The White Hart In the early summer
sunshine the country was very green and sweet The land
was less stark and barren than the nver-valley, trees
thicker about the fields and along the little devious road-
sides It was a country that the Bishops knew better than
they knew their own hands

As they walked along, and again as they sat in the par-
lour of the pub, Luke would sometimes gaze at has father
in conscious admiration In the pub there would be all

46

YOUTH

the old arguments on God and politics, his father refreshed
and excited by his own words, the landlady sharp and
inexorable But always, m the end, with the arguments
exhausted or put aside for another time, the talk would
return to poachmg and the keepers Reeves was a silent
man and the walk across the hot fields would seem often
to fatigue him Not drinking, he would sit with his head
lolling idly back against the whitewashed wall of the bar,
his thin hand stroking the cat, his whole attitude listless
and neutral, and when Bishop first mtroduced him the
landlady pursed her lips in doubt
^He am’t very fat,’ she said
‘^Fat* He’s a rimner ’

'He’ll need to be ’

He spoke more quietly
‘How’s that^’

‘And he am’t the only one who’s going to need long
legs m these parts before so long ’

‘Ah^’ he said ‘How’s that^’

‘I thought you were the one,’ she said, ‘who knew such
a ’nation lot ’

He took up his beer with a sudden swagger
‘Don’t tell me it’s summat about keepers,’ he said
She began to busy herself, silent and tart, with the towel
and glasses behind the bar, holding up the shining glasses
to the window-light, ignoring him
‘WelP’ he said at last

‘ If you don’t want to hear, Mr Bishop, I can’t make
you ’

‘Ah, what is it then,’ he condescended, ‘what is it^’
‘Nothing,’ she said, ‘nothing A bit of a tale about the
new keepers ’

He was a little interested

‘New keepers^ New^’ he said ‘What’s wrong with
Marsh and Willis and that lot^’

47

THE POACHER

* They’re fimshed/ she said ‘A clean sweep ’

He wiped the beer from his lips with the back of his
hand, slowly

‘Oh— ah^’ he said

His careless gesture and the languid tone of his surprise
incensed her

‘You can oh-ah, Buck Bishop, but—*

‘Keepers,’ he broke in densively ‘I never bin nabbed
by a keeper yet and ain’t likely to be ’

‘Don’t you be so cocksure of yourself When this lot—*
‘New or old,’ he said ‘I don’t care who they are ’

She gave it up But he was curious to know about it all
Why the new keepers^ What was wrong with the old
crew^ He spoke softly, ironically He would be lost
without the old crew They were like old fnends When
did the new lot come Familiarity had bred contempt
But in spite of his cocksureness, he was quiet and intent
‘Old Lord Henry is dead,’ she told him at last
‘Ah^ Sudden^’ he said

‘Don’t you hear nothmg down at Nenweald^’ she
flashed

‘We got summat else to do besides chatter,’ he said,
‘about top-notchers ’

‘Well, I’ve told you,’ she said, giving it up again
‘Don’t say I didn’t tell you ’

‘What’s a’matter^ ’ he said in soft astonishment ‘What’s
a’matter about a few keepers^’

She leaned across the bar and spoke for the first time
earnestly and insistently

‘It ain’t gomg to be safe to look at a rabbit round here ’

‘Well, I never,’ he murmured softly

‘I’ve seen the new man He comes in here *

‘Ah* What’s A^hke^’

‘Big man, fine built Named Baron ’

‘Baron^ Am’t his titled’ he mocked

48

YOUTH

She grew angry again ‘He*d make two of you^’ she
flashed

'There*’ He picked up his glass, drank the last of his
beer and wiped his lips on the back of his hand with the
old derisive gesture 'Well, we’ll be getting back ’

'And take my tip,’ she said earnestly, 'and stop there
for a while ’

'Ah, we’ll see,’ he promised 'We’ll see ’

But the next morning, even earlier, the three men were
back at the pub agam Bishop had a cowslip m his mouth,
and chewed the sweet stalk when he spoke

'You’re sharp, am’t you^’ said the landlady 'You’re
sharp * ’

'Let’s have th’ old trap out,’ he said 'I feel like a qmet
drive round ’

'Well, you do as you hke, you—’

' God a’mighty. Poll, God a’mighty What’s wrong with
a quiet drive round
'Nothing, nothmg*’ she said
'Buck Bishop can look after—’

'All right, all right You—’

They contmued to argue while Luke harnessed the little
black mare to the trap, the little woman afraid beneath an
air of resignation, Bishop never changing his tone of soft
cocksureness When they had finished arguing and the
mare was ready the three men climbed up into the trap
and drove out of the pub-yard. Bishop with the rems
lightly in his fingers and his driving hand careless on his
knee

They drove through the village and up the road and
past the last farm into open country without speaking It
was an old maxim of Bishop’s that the less they spoke the
better 'Save your breath,’ he would say 'There’s no
tellmg when you’ll need every morsel on it ’ But except
on the night excursions he had no sooner made the rule
^ 49

THE POACHER

than he was breaking it again, relating some wild talc
about his early poaching days or of fights with raw fists on
distant spinney-sides on early summer mornmgs, or of the
greatest runner he ever saw m his life Tiring of the
stories or growing ecstatic over them he would often burst
into singing For such a large fleshy man he had a sur-
prisingly delicate, flexible tenor voice As a boy he had
sung in the church choir at Nenweald Ht was only that
shirt rig-out that finished me ’ He loved hymns, and the
hymns he sang would become mixed with the ballads and
pub-songs he had learned m pubs and at fairs He sang
much, but drank little Once, as a boy of seventeen, Luke
swaggered off in the darkness to meet his father from the
night’s poaching, his legs silly with beer, his head big and
proud He walked with an exaggerated swagger belching
his bad breath noisily Without warning. Bishop raised his
fist and knocked him backwards into the hedge on the
roadside ‘If you’re coming with me,’ he said, ‘you’re
coming sober ’

Up on the higher land, above the village, the morning
was magnificent Cowslips had come out m thousands on
the grassland, richer and deeper in colour than the May
sunlight In the hollow below, the land, never enclosed,
was hke a single hedgeless field, vast and rollmg It was
guarded on all sides by a circle of woods Under the
woods the slopes were green with grass, but down m the
hollow and beyond the village the light emerald of wheat-
fields was as vivid and sweet as the cowslip-coloured grass
in the clear sunshine

Bishop pulled up the mare at the crest of the hill and
let her gaze on the roadside grass, and the men looked
back over the wide circle of summer country Gommg up
the hill Bishop had been tellmg a story of his early poaching
days It was an old story But Reeves was a new listener
and Bishop, warmed up, kept laying his hand on the

50

YOUTH

young man*s arm as he told the tale with the old soft,
emphatic derision he kept for religion and keepers The
story was that of a keeper who had followed Bishop, one
winter night, for many miles Bishop could hear the
increasing sound of the footsteps behmd him and when-
ever he paused the footsteps paused also Tired of it at
last Bishop waited for the footsteps to come up At that
part of the story he would begm to grow excited, his voice
trembling, as he told how he waited for the keeper to
arrive and of how he said to him with extreme qmetness
^ Don’t you think you’d better git back to bed afore your
feet git cold^’ and of how the keeper turned, without a
word, and disappeared

Luke had heard the story so often that he sat without
listenmg, leaning back over the trap-seat, staring idly
over the wide country His father had come to the point
in the story where he was waiting for the keeper to come
up when Luke became conscious suddenly of a dog sniffing
along the path by the woodside The air was so still by
the wood that he could hear the dog, a setter, panting for
breath The dog sniffed and paused and doubled back
repeatedly under the thick green hedge, and as Luke sat
watching it a gate clicked along the woodside, the setter
bounded back along the path and a man came round the
bend in the wood carrying a gun under his arm

Luke had not time to speak before his father, hearmg
the click of the gate, had broken off the tale and was
looking up too The man was coming along the path with
great strides, but very slowly, his body extremely stiff and
erect He looked like a soldier He was a gigantic man,
taller by an inch or two than Bishop, his thighs tight in his
breeches, his large face taut and ripe, the fair skin burnt
to a reddish gold by the sun The big setter seemed hke
a puppy as it bounded about his thick legs and his gun
seemed like a toy under his arm

51

THE POACHER

‘Baron** said Bishop softly

‘Better hook it’ Luke spoke with his hand over his
mouth

‘Keep your mouth shut*’

The three men were silent, waiting for the keeper to
come through the last gate The setter, squirming under
the gate, came bounding across the road, making the mare
uneasy The keeper opened the gate and came through,
turning his back on the men as he fastened the catch
From behind he seemed more massive than ever
As the keeper was shutting the gate Bishop switched the
reins a fraction and the mare, startled by the action and
the bounding of the setter, backed across the road, her
head up, quivering and prickmg, and Bishop raised his
voice

‘Hey, shopmate ’ It was the old shoemakers’ greetmg
‘ Your dog ain’t doing this mare no good Whoa * ’

The keeper turned his head

‘You better be getting on wherever you’re going then,’
he said

He lowered his head over the gate-catch and finally
hooked it up

‘You Mr Willis^’ called Bishop

The keeper came across the grass from the gate to the
road, slow and deliberate He had a soft fair moustache,
almost the colour of his golden skin, that had been freshly
clipped, like a soldier’s And standing on the grass he
rubbed the tips of his thick fingers softly backwards and
forwards across his lips, famtly hostile and superior*
‘Willis has finished,’ he said
‘Ah^ When^ When wor that^’

‘Willis finished on the last of April ’

‘Bless my heart an’ life ’

‘I’m his lordship’s new keeper ’

Bishop made a soft sound of surprise, almost con-
fix

YOUTH

temptuous The keeper stood half at a loss, still caressing
his moustache, trying to make up his mind about the men
Bishop, waiting for him to speak again, caught sight at
that moment of many pheasant coops grouped along the
grassland on the south of the wood, and he spoke instead
^They your bird-coops^’ he said
^They are ’

‘Funny place ’

The keeper ceased at that moment to caress his mou-
stache and ran his tongue softly over his lips

‘When I want yoiu* advice 111 ask for it,’ he said
‘Only looks a bit queer to me You’ll get all the south-
west rams coming across there, that’s all Willis found
that out Whoa^’

‘I thought by the way you spoke you didn’t know Willis ’
‘Ah, I never Whoa* I never Marsh told me That’s
how I knowed ’

‘Oh*’

The keeper stood for a moment longer regarding the
three men as they sat huddled together in the half-ram-
shackle trap with their caps slouched and their black
neckerchiefs knotted high up their necks He seemed to
come to a decision about them

‘You gyppos keep clear of this estate,’ he said
‘What’s that^’ Bishop half-sprang out of his seat
‘What’s you say, be God^’

‘I said you gyppos—’

‘ Gyppos * ’

Bishop snatched at the rems as he spoke and the mare,
starting forward, took the trap askew across the road
The setter, frightened, set up a great yelpmg as the trap
went past The keeper took a great stnde across the road
as though to catch the mare’s head and check her, but
Bishop eased the reins and let the mare go down the road
at a fast pace Looking back at last, the three men leaned

53

THE POACHER

over the trap-seat m an attitude of secure derision The
keeper was standing m the road, his face ablaze with
anger, the dog yelping round and round
‘Gyppos^’ said Bishop, furious 'God a’mighty*
Gyppos ’ ’

‘D’ye think we caught the dog^’ said Reeves
‘God a’mighty’ Gyppos’’

Bishop snatched at the reins and flicked the mare with
a series of sharp slaps across her neck and the trap tore
wildly down the hill under the avenue of trees
‘ Gyppos ’ ’ he kept saying ‘ Gyppos ’ ’

His face was furious with anger, the blood very dark
under his fine skm By contrast Reeves had turned very
white, the blood drained even out of his hands

54

CHAPTER III

I

T HAT summer Bishop began to enter Reeves in the run-
ning handicaps at the fairs and horse-shows of the sur-
rounding countryside, but the young man was disap-
pointing He ran as though he were very tired, and Bishop,
who had grown fond and hopeful of him, did not under-
stand It and was worried Reeves’ lassitude mcreased as
the summer went on and finally Bishop decided to reduce
the morning training and to forbid him to go at night on
the poaching expeditions But Reeves, curiously stubborn
and anxious, and above all fearful of losing Bishop’s ad-
miration of him as a runner, would not listen Arguing
with Bishop, his face very thm and colourless, his eyes
burnt up with fatigue, he was desperate Where was the
sense m not training^ Where was the sensed He was all
right, he never felt better And he liked to be out with
them on the warm summer nights What did they take
him for^ He liked it, he wanted to go* It contmued like
this until, as the three of them were coming down the hill-
slope below Sheldrake wood m the misty half-darkness of
a July morning, the keepers surprised them without
warning, only the protection of the mist saving them as
they scattered Bishop, old enough and cunning enough
to loxow every spinney and hedge and drain-hole between
himself and Nenweald, and all the tricks of doubling and
redoubling his tracks and running at an inexhaustible
pace, escaped by crossing and recrossmg the countryside
until the mist dispersed He was m the kitchen, fiying his
breakfast bacon and washmg the mud from his boots,
before six o’clock and except that his shirt was like a wet

55

THE POACHER

cloth with mist and sweat he felt no effects of it all Half an
hour later Luke came in and Bishop fried more bacon and
cracked more eggs into the pan while Luke cleaned the
mud from his shoes

^Did you see the boy^’ said Bishop 'Did you see which
way he went^’

'I never set eyes on him ’

'He’ll be lost, sure enough ’

But before they had finished breakfast Reeves came m
He was exhausted and could not speak He stood stanng
at Luke and his father m an extraordmary state of pathetic
bewilderment, his mouth opening tremulously and shut-
ting agam without a sound

'Say something, boy^ Say something Bishop kept
saying 'Where have ye been^ Say something Did they
get hold of ye^ Say something*’

Before he had finished speaking Reeves looked wildly
about him and collapsed Bishop took him in his arms
and undressed him Dunng the faint Reeves lay flat and
stiff* on the bed with his eyes wide open and Bishop chafed
his wrists with a little brandy, talking to him gendy at the
same time 'Come on, now, boy, come on now ’ Hearing
the commotion and Bishop’s entreating voice, the women
got up and came along to the httle back bedroom In
turn they chafed Reeves’ hands and went downstairs for
hot water But, strangely, they asked no questions And
gradually Reeves revived

From the first he was in a fever He did not speak much
He would begin to tell what happened in disjointed sen-
tences and then break off, exhausted Bishop, already re-
proaching himself, made him a boiling tea of herbs, and
that night sat up with him, Luke sleeping on the sofa m
the hvmg-room downstairs The second day Reeves was
much worse The fever was very high, and the women
would have had the doctor, but Bishop would not hear of

56

YOUTH

It He roamed about the meadows that morning and
gathered fresh herbs and made Reeves a purging tea, and
that night, as Bishop sat by his bedside, Reeves went off
into a heavy sleep, it developed into a kind of coma
as the night went on and m the morning he did not
wake

Towards the evenmg of the same day he became worse
agam and Bishop, alarmed at last, sent Hester for the
doctor While he had gone Reeves aroused a little and
tned to say something to Bishop Bishop, unable to hear,
lifted him up from the pillow m his arms The words
Reeves had tried to utter never came, and before Bishop
could do anything the young man was dead
In the week immediately following Reeves’ death Bishop
began to behave strangely Always secretive and ex-
tremely cautious and guarded in his speech and often a
man of no speech at all in public, he began to go about m
a spirit of garrulous defiance He would tell the story of
Baron and the gipsy insult and the story of Reeves and his
death over and over again in the bars, always with boasts
of revenge Luke, having to hsten not only in the bars but
over the dmner-table and on their walks together, grew
tired of It all and at last impatient

^Nothmg but talk about Baron and Reeves^’ he said at
last ‘Who’s Baron bah ^ ’

‘Who’s Baron, eh^ I’ll bloody soon show him who’s
Baron D’ye hear^ Gyppos^— you heard him say it—
gyppos’ didn’t ye
‘Give It a rest ’

They were walking together m the summer darkness
across the open fields, going towards Sheldrake, and
Bishop came to a sudden halt as Luke spoke, and turned
upon him with deliberate anger
‘Ain’t you satisfied^’ he said
‘Satisfied^’

57

THE POACHER

‘Ain’t you satisfied to let me do as I think fit^ Ain’t I
good enough for you^’

‘You want to give that talk about Baron a rest, that’s all ’
‘I’ll give Baron a rest, if that’s anything ’

‘What good?’

‘What good, eh? I’ll show you what good And if you
ain’t satisfied you be off back Be off back now* See* You’d
be domg a damn sight more good than chelpmg here ’
Luke turned, almost before his father had finished
speaking, and walked across the fields, without a word
After that Bishop began to go off at night alone It was
the first tune they had differed, outright Half-bored, Luke
spent tlie summer evenmgs by the river, fishing or laying
his eel-hnes secretly under the big willow trees, but Bishop,
morose and taciturn, never said where he had been and
never tried to renew the old relations again, and they kept
apart all the summer

Harvest brought them together again Every autumn
Bishop would negotiate for the work of harvesting from a
neighbounng farmer, and towards the middle of August
the whole family would go out to the fields, hving and
working there until the last shock had been earned, the
women returning again for the gleamng In early August,
when the corn was in full ear but not yet ripened. Bishop
would call at the farmhouse standing beyond the great
walnut tree under which the Bishops had once lived He
would ask for Spong, the farmer, and together they would
walk through the stack-yard and down the meadow-lane
and into the npenmg fields of corn Like a man m a day-
dream Bishop would stare across the soft running waves
made by the hght wmd on the dehcate white oats or at
the heavy wheat ears just begmnmg to drop with their own
weight m the blaze of sunshme And fcally he would
run his hands softly among the cornstalks and say
‘What are ye gomg to give us?’

58

YOUTH

And Spong would look away over the field too and say
that he would give this or that price for reaping and tying,
by the field or the acre, with harvest beer thrown in The
price would vary from year to year, with the hghtness and
fullness of the crop, and after looking away again over the
field Bishop would say, 'Ifs a tidy yield, master,^ and
Spong would consider it and gaze across the field again
and then put a fraction on the price Then Bishop would
consider it and then spit and say, 'The beer ain’t good
enough,’ and after a moment or two m a pretence of
thought Spong would name another quart a day Bishop,
satisfied, would gaze for the last time across the ripenmg
field and remark, 'Looks to me oughter be ready about th’
eleventh ’ Surpnsed, Spong would say, ' I reckoned not
till th’ eighteenth, Bish,’ but Bishop would shake his head
'I’ll be along about th’ eleventh, any road,’ he would say,
and the deal would be over

The harvest that year was early and by the middle of
August the oats were down The Bishops would be m the
field soon after daybreak, Mrs Bishop bringmg the day’s
food m a shoemaker’s truck, wheeling the truck under the
hedge on the north side of the field They began work at
once in the morning coolness, Bishop and Luke mowing,
the women gathering and bmding, the girls makmg the
bonds and their mother bmdmg the sheaves Except for
the noon rest and the mid-mommg breakfast and the
pauses for drinking the work went on all day, until dark-
ness came Bishop mowed throughout the day with serene
strength, as though tireless, his changeless motions having
no effort m them With the scythe m his hands he was a
new man, nothing of the shoemaker or the poacher left
about him except his black bowler, which he wore all day
as though he had forgotten it At fixed intervals he
stopped to drmk, all day a soft beer-coloured sweat stood
on his sun-brown arms and face He mowed m silence

59

THE POACHER

but It was a new silence, an expression of Ins satisfaction
m the sound of his scythe among the harsh cornstalks and
m the sight of his swathe lying yellow and beautiful on the
stubble behind him

Luke sensed the change in his father He felt that
Baron and Reeves were forgotten and he was relieved
whenever he thought of it He had already a strong desire
to be back in the old way of hfe the lazy days, the leisurely
walks to the White Hart m the summer mornings, the
excitement and solitude of the poaching at nights, the feel
of the warm rabbit flesh under his quick hands One
evenmg as he was dropping his beer bottle on his jacket in
the shadow of a shock a young rabbit started out of the
standing corn and as it came towards him, running blindly
to escape, he dropped flat on his stomach, pmnmg the
rabbit to earth and cracking its neck with almost a single
movement of his hands Getting up and swinging the soit
and still warm body of the dead rabbit m his hands, he
experienced a sensation of strange elation And looking
across the field he saw that his father, paused in the act
of whetting his scythe, was watching him, smiling with the
old sardonic approval

From that moment they were mtimate again It was
an mtimacy that flowed between them, just as the an-
tagonism had done, with little speech Looking back into
the past weeks of the summer, Luke saw for the first time
how dull and unreal the life without his father had been,
how little he had enjoyed it, and how much of his life
altogether came from has father As he thought of it he
remembered quite suddenly the earliest times when they
had gone out together His father had taught him to set
a snare, showing him how to twist the wire to a noose, how
to cut the stake and set it, how to cover the gap so that the
snare and the stake were part of the hawthorn and the
grasses The elation he had experienced on snaring his

6o

YOUTH

first rabbit was the same elation which ran through him
m the harvest field Mingled with it was the pndc his
father had m him and which he m turn had in his father
It was a pride which it never occurred to either of them to
put into words

But at intervals during the mowing Bishop talked of
something else a new scheme for the coming winter He
wanted to make a change from the old poaching country
There was a flattish, wooded stretch of country to the
south of Nenweald, good country^ but remote He had
tried It once, many years before But then the plantations
of spruce and pine were still young and were patrolled by
keepers and woodmen night and day In those days it was
dangerous country even to him, and he had given it up,
but with regret

He had ever since wanted to try it again After harvest
they would borrow the trap and drive round there and
look at the land and consider it Bishop had an idea that
the old family on the estate had broken up and that the
big mansion itself was empty They could find out about it

During their conversation Luke listened for a repetition
of the old talk about Reeves and Baron and revenge, but
it never came He was glad of it, half-prided himself that
he was responsible for the new scheme and the new mood
And as the hot days of harvest went by he began to look
forward to autumn and the new country

2

Before the end of October the Bishops began to know
the new country very well They would hire the trap
from the White Hart in the early afternoons and travel m
a leisurely fashion southward, through the half-strange
villages, and along the utterly strange roads running mto

THE POACHER

the heart of the woods It was a country more richly
wooded than ever Bishop remembered it to be between
the old woods of oak and pine the young spruce coppices
of his youth had made great growth There was always a
sheltered stillness in the air among the thick spruces, and
the sweetness of the spruce-bark would be heavy m the
sultry autumn afternoons The woods, planted so thickly,
shut off the wmd and the outer world completely, and there
were no houses except occasional cottages, whitewashed as
though to counteract the shadowiness made by the over-
hanging trees, with hens runnmg wild m the surrounding
undergrowth and across the deserted roads In the heart
of the woods, half-hidden by great avenues of hme and
cedar, stood the mansion Bishop had talked about Catch-
ing sight of It occasionally, often by accident, on those
autumn afternoons. Bishop would pull up the trap, the
httle white terner would stir from its sleepiness in the floor
of the trap and leap up on to the seat, and Bishop would
smooth his hand absently backwards and forwards across
the dog’s head as he gazed at the house and pointed out
Its features It was the wmdows and the chimneys of the
place that interested Bishop ^ Never a mossel o’ smoke,
see^ Not a mossel And the shutters all up D’ye twig
it^’ As they drew up by the wall of the park one after-
noon the rustle of the horse’s feet m the fresh-fallen leaves
startled a multitude of rabbits in the deserted park such as
they had never seen When the rabbits had vanished noth-
mg moved across the whole space of that quiet parkland
except the falhng leaves of beech and lime Bishop drove
on m a silence, almost a stupor, of wonder In all their
wanderings up and down the woodlands and about the
park they had never seen a keeper only a solitary wood-
man, very old, cuttmg up a fallen beech with feeble blows
of an axe The place seemed altogether forgotten and lost
m the profound solitude Bishop halted the trap on

62

YOUTH

another afternoon and ahghted and tried each of the five
high iron gates, crested with a shield of blue and gold, as
they came to them The locks were fast and stiff with rust
from the summer rams, and drifts of poppy and grass and
marigold had seeded themselves m the carnage dnves
curvmg away under the trees

‘You could lay your nets m broad daylight/ Bishop
marvelled

But still he was faintly suspicious It was not enough
that he should see the place fbrgotten and deserted by day
He wanted also to see it and make a safe trespass across it
by night

‘We ain’t th’ only chaps with a couple o’ ferrets and a
net And I am’t so sure about keepers yet When I was a
boy-chap this park was lousy with keepers ’

They watched for signs of keepers wherever they went
a mole-trap set across a pathway m the woods, the dead
skins of stoat and weasel and jay and magpie strung up
on the edges of the ridings But they saw nothing In-
stead, m the autumn stillness, they would hear the squawk
and cackle of prey-birds hidden m the great trees or flying
across the deserted parkland Seeing one afternoon a
weasel taking the thin tram of her young across the road,
Luke drawled

‘You am’t going to teU me there’s keepers m this place
—not after that^’

‘What’s a weasel or two^ ’ said Bishop ‘What’s a weasel
or two m a place this size^ We’ll keep quiet a bit ’

Towards the end of October they kept away from the
place for about a week It was soft autumn weather, the
days still and sxmny, the nights warm and heavy with dew,
and m the peaceful unoccupied afternoons Luke would
loll by the river, m some secluded place brooded over by
a hawthorn that had not lost its leaves, with a sly line at
rest in the quiet water The old traming runs m the early

63

THE POACHER

mornings had broken off with Reeves’ death and had not
been renewed , but the long habit itself could not be broken,
and he would be out in the early morning, alone or with
Bishop, the same as ever, coming home to breakfast with
a neckerchief of mushrooms or his eels strung on a reed
There was a half-monotonous pleasure in the easy days
that left him languid Durmg the summer he had grown
thinner and taller The harvest had been good and the
Bishops were well off, but the work had tried him He was
glad of the easy days and the quiet weather that were like
balm on his own lassitude That autumn, thinking of the
new poachmg schemes, he did not once go to see his aunt
Hannah He had no desire for anything but the soft quiet
days And living that purely physical life, he never thought
of the future except in terms of the deserted park and the
house standing among its limes and cedars m the heart of
the woodland He never paused to think whether he
cared if life ever went farther than that He wanted only
to take the dreamy physical days as they came and then
forget them when they had gone
With part of the harvest-money Bishop had bought
three new nets Beyond that he would not go They
would wait a little— they could afford to wait And after
the langmd uneventful days they would pass the evenings
in one or other of his favourite bars Bishop often argued
so intensely over God and Bradlaugh that Luke would sit
and listen m a kind of alarmed suspense, half-afraid that
his father had forgotten what they had planned to do
And seeing him one evening sitting like that, suspended
and silent, the landlady remarked
‘Luke am’t in trouble, Bish, is he^’

‘He don’t know what trouble is,’ said Bishop
‘Ain’t gals, is it^’

‘Gals*’ said Bishop ‘He’s got summat more important
to trouble his head about than gals ’

64

YOUTH

3

A clock was striking nine somewhere as they climbed
over the wall of the park, early in November, on a night
of warm darkness The rams of autumn had been slight
and the turf below the wall was soft but dry, taking the
weight of their jumps silently They had chosen a place
where there was a gap between the trees, and m the clear
starlight they could see the park stretching out before
them with perfect clearness, mto the black distance of
cedars and leafless limes They paused for a moment
under the wall to hsten, but the night seemed soundless
It was only when they began to move again that its
sounds awoke the scuffle of an odd rabbit or two into
hiding, the flutter of disturbed wings m the dark branches
and the sound of their feet rustling invisible leaves

The first sounds brought them to a sudden standstill
again, listening They did not speak They were sounds
which normally they would have dismissed unconsciously,
as part of the silence and the darkness, but m a strange
place the sounds too were strange, and they stood for a
moment arrested in half-alarm before walkmg on agam
They had walked the ten miles from Nenweald under
cover of darkness, by the little by-roads, missmg the
villages, bringing notiung with them except an ash stick,
a mouthful of bread and cheese which they had already
eaten as they walked along Bishop had decided that they
might enter the park on the south side and cross it
diagonally, gomg northwards, makmg an exploration

Out m the park, in the unbroken space of grassland
between the thick belt of trees and the mansion itself the
mght was utterly silent The feet of the men were sound-
less They were walkmg now, due northward, the stars
by the Plough very brilliant to the right of the great house,
^ 65

THE POACHER

the Plough half-inverted Before them, high above its
stone terraces, beyond the cedar trees, the house had a look
of strange remoteness In the clear starlight the many
white closed shutters of the windows were just visible, the
pale stone face of the house broken up horizontally here
and there by the blackness of the slender cedar branches
There were no lights and no sound of life except as they
drew nearer to the place the quiet sound of running
water— the sound of a waterfall flowing mvisibly down
somewhere beyond the cedars and the terraces The water
itself flowed away into a thin stream across the park and
as they crossed the stream in a single leap Luke caught the
smell of the water, half-sweet, half-rotten with the odour
of fallen leaves Soon after they had crossed the stream
they came to a halt again under the first of the balustraded
terraces And standing there, motionless, they could hear
nothing again but the constant flow of the waterfall They
stood for a long time listening But except for the sound of
water and the light of the stars it was as if they were in a
remote and lifeless world

They walked on again at a sign from Bishop Grossing
what had once been the great lawn between the cedar
trees and the terraces they could feel the uncut grass thick
and rank under their feet, and Luke came upon a sprink-
ling of mushrooms, strangely white in the dark grass But
opening his knife and stooping to cut them he suddenly
paused and called to Bishop

‘Here,’ he whispered ‘Look ’

Bishop bent silently over the mushrooms Then he ran
his hands among them Between the young fresh buttons
that had sprung up that day the thick stalks of the old had
been cut off He picked up a severed stalk in his hand
He fingered the clean kmfe-cut and squeezed the stalk
until a thin juice, like dew, came out on his fingers

‘Ain’t been so long, either,’ he said

66

YOUTH

Luke shut up his knife and Bishop rose, and they went
on together across the lawn without touching the mush-
rooms They were beyond the terraces, m rough grass-
land, before Bishop spoke agam
'We’re second,’ he said, and then, before Luke could
answer, he whispered for him to listen

Listenmg, Luke could hear nothing but the sudden
intermittent flap of an owl flymg somewhere m the direc-
tion of the house A moment later the sounds came
nearer and the owl, flymg very low, wandered dimly over
the terraces and then out of hearmg They stood there
listenmg for it to return, but it did not come and finally
they moved on agam. Bishop very quiet and with an air
of caution, as though he were still not satisfied
They walked across the parkland on the far side of the
house without once looking back and without once hear-
mg another sound The sound of the waterfall had faded
away, the owl had not returned, and it was only when they
reached a pomt where the thick woods of spruce came
down to the edge of the park that they began to hear
sounds again— the old sounds of rabbits scufflmg, of dis-
turbed wings m the wood, and the famt noises of fallen
leaves

The air was filled with nothmg but the perpetual sweet-
ness of spruce-bark Falling heavily, it smothered the
mellowness of the autumn grass The trees themselves
were still, movmg less than the stars that winked and
trembled beyond their fragile branches, and under their
shadow the old sense of lifelessness returned
It was all as they had hoped and wanted, and commg
presently to a gate they climbed into the wood, walkmg
up one ndmg and down another without hearmg any-
thmg but the old sounds of birds and leaves
Under the trees the darkness was mtense The stars
were thinned to mere solitary flashes by the blackness and

67

THE POACHER

thickness of spruce branches And coming down the last
of the ridings towards the open parkland they were not
conscious of the dark figure standing by the fence until
they were twenty yards away

They stood stock-still, watching him In the thick wood-
darkness they could feel him watching them m return
They stood like that, motionless and watchful, for fully a
minute without seeing him stir and without themselves
moving or even whispermg

Then Bishop began to retreat, step by step, m utter
silence in the rank wood-grass, moving backwards Then
Luke began to retreat It was an old ruse and had often
succeeded He felt at that moment quite calm, filled with
a kmd of sober expectancy which mcreased at each of his
backward steps He watched the figure by the stile with
the same increasing expectancy, wondering when he
would move and why he did not move And as the
minutes went past and the distance of their retreat m-
creased he began to feel a kmd of contempt for him and a
kmd of exultation m himself

They had retreated twenty or thirty yards and the figure
by the fence had become almost a part of the darlmess
again when Bishop began to run He turned quite sud-
denly, without a sign, and began to run with long silent
strides down the ndmg

Luke turned and began to rim also, a little faster He
had always admired the ease and strength of Bishop’s
runnmg, and he was already half-consciously lost m ad-
miration of his smooth imvarymg pace when a gunshot
went off behind him, the shot tearing wildly past him
mto the darkness

He began to run at a great pace down the ndmg as
soon as the shot was fired, like a man moving off at the
gun-signal m a race Behmd him he could hear the ap-
proachmg sounds of other feet and before him the sound

68

YOUTH

of Bishop’s long easy stride going on as steadily as though
the shot had never been fired As he passed his father his
admiration at that stride turned partly to fear and partly
to anger He expected every moment to hear the sound of
another shot He muttered a word or two of impatience as
he went past his father, but Bishop did not answer and did
not mcrease his pace, and to his surprise the shot did not
come

He vaulted the fence at the nding-end with a great leap
A mmute later, as he set off across the park, he heard the
scrape of Bishop’s boot-nails on the fence slats as he
climbed the fence He half-turned to shout his impatience
agam when the second shot was fired The sound, tearmg
through the confined space among the spruces, was so
near and so terrific that it made him stagger In his half-
turned attitude he thought he saw Bishop stagger too He
half-stopped He could hear Bishop panting heavily
Beyond him, m the wood, the sounds of pursuit had sud-
denly ceased Before they were renewed again Bishop
had caught up with him, running with the same old easy
and unchanging stride

They began to run diagonally across the park, away
from the house, taking a northerly direction almost un-
consciously They were running together now ‘All
right Luke asked Bishop did not answer him He had
a momentary fear that his father had been hit by the shot,
but it passed, his old admiration at the strong smooth
stride returning instead agam That, too, vanished as he
heard the sound of feet agam and the brief crack of the
wooden gun-stock striking the fence slats

From these sounds he knew that they had a start of
forty or fifty yards He knew that it was enough, and a
feeling of sharp surprise shot through him as he first
became aware of Bishop mcreasing his pace

Nevertheless he mcreased his own pace also His

69

THE POACHER

confidence in his father at that moment took the form of
an excited exultation Whatever he did was safe , whatever
he did was surprisingly right The exultation gave him
fresh strength, a kind of contemptuous courage He did
not care what might happen The steadmess of the
sounds of pursmt behind him did not matter

Gradually the heavy fragrance of spruce-bark dimm-
ished and faded away The park, after the mtense black-
ness of the woods, seemed dangerously light under the
clear starhght It began to seem of vast extent also
They seemed already to have been rurming for many
miles and durmg many hours

He was running now on his second wmd and the sweat
was begmmng to come out on his face The sounds behmd
them had already diminished and long before the wall of
the park appeared before them m the darkness they had
ceased altogether Without them the night silence seemed
ilhmitable There was something also ommous about it
too

Until they reached the wall it was broken only by the
sound of their own feet m the grass and by the noise of
Bishop spittmg and snortmg at mtervals as he renewed
his breath At the wall they awoke agam the rustle of dead
leaves under the belt of trees, the flutter and scuffle of
odd rabbits and birds Once they were on the other side
of the wall they, too, were silent

Out on the road Bishop ran on implacably, turning to
the nght without pausmg He had reverted now to the
old pace The stars of the Plough lay half-over on the left
hand of the men, very bright through the half-bare tree
branches spreading and meetmg over the httle road
Under the trees it was very warm, the air damp and
sultry as if with summer thunder The men ran without
speakmg, one behmd another. Bishop leading, always on
the roadside grass

70

YOUTH

They ran on thus for a great distance, leaving the first
road for a second and that in turn for another and then
another, forking and zigzagging through the belts of
spruce and pine without pausing or speaking or changing
their pace, the North Star always m front of them There
became no question any longer of pursuit Running,
Luke half-forgot the park, the wood, the sudden shots
tearmg through the trees and the succeedmg pursuit of
feet

He was glad when his father stopped at last, dropping
suddenly down, without warnmg, on the grassy slope of a
stream going under the road

‘Hold hard,’ said Bishop

He was glad to hear his father’s voice, thick but not
breathless Droppmg down beside him he half-lay on the
autumn-wet grass, pantmg, spittmg a little to clear his
mouth He could hear, as he had done m the park, the
famt trickle of water a little stream coming down from
the quiet fields over a bed of stones He lay listenmg to
It until his father’s voice broke the stillness agam

‘Here, feel that ’

Bishop had rolled up the right leg of his trousers
‘Feel that,’ he said agam He was running his hand
down his bared leg Luke, too, put his hand on the
bare flesh, feehng the coarse hairs and the sweat-warm
skm

There was a warm stickiness of congealmg blood on his
hand when he drew it away ‘ Christ ^ ’ he said Mechani-
cally he wiped his hand m the grass

‘Shot^’ he said

‘I felt It catch me,’ said Bishop

‘Where’d it catch you^’

‘It ain’t much,’ said Bishop ‘The blood’s dry a’ready
It’s dry a’ready ’

‘Are y’all right^’

71

THE POACHER

‘Wind a minute, that’s all Wind a minute *

They lay for what seemed a long time on the grass
The sweat dried cold on their limbs The coolness from
the brook rose up and fell like dew Luke could hear his
father panting quickly in the recovery of his breath and
except for the quiet ripple of the stream there was no other
sound

‘What clock is it, d’ye reckon^’ Bishop said at last
‘Ten or more Where are we^’

‘We’re all right/ murmured Bishop ‘We’re all right ’
Bishop rose as he spoke and almost simultaneously
Luke rose too His father’s words gave him an immense
assurance It continued with him long after they had
risen from the brookside and had proceeded onwards
along the dark maze of roads between the darker
woods

They were walking now Their sense of distance and
place had grown a little confused, so that Bishop paused
sometimes to deliberate at the road-crossmgs They
seemed to be going on for ever through illimitably dark
strange country, nothmg except a disturbed bird or leaf
and themselves moving

Once or twice Luke spoke of the shot ‘Where’d it hit
ye^ How d’ye feeP ’ Until finally Bishop turned on him
with impatience

‘God a’mighty, keep on about that shot Keep on Ye
might think I’d been hit be a damn cannon-ball ’

After that they went on in silence, walking at a regular
easy pace. Bishop never pausmg or slackening
It was only when they began to leave the woods behmd
at last and came into the more open country of the first
fields and the first sohtary farms that Bishop seemed to
grow suddenly tired He began to walk more slowly
Simultaneously Luke could hear his breath indrawn
heavily and expelled again with a sharp gasp as though

72

YOUTH

of pam But he said nothing, and Luke, remembering his
last words, kept silent too

They were still m strange country, a country still
patched with odd copses of spruce between the farms,
when Bishop sank down on the grass agam for the first of
many pauses In one of these sudden and involuntary
pauses they had been resting for fully a minute on
the roadside grass before Luke became aware that
they were lying under the garden-hedge of a farmhouse
standing a little back from the road, a low yellow-
washed house half-hidden by its own stacks and overhead
trees

He had hardly realized it when, somewhere behind the
stacks and the cluster of cow hovels, a dog began barking
It began to bark first m anger and then with intermittent
howls at the scent of their presence The sounds echoed
loudly over the qmet land He sprang up, wildly, startled
for the first time that night into fear He could hear the
running Jingle of the dog cham as the dog leapt to escape
And he saw for the first time a light m the window of the
farmhouse

Seeing the light, he urged his father ‘Come on, come
on*’ but to his astonishment Bishop did not move He
bent down to him half m anger And again, hearing the
dog break into a fresh frenzy of barkmg and howling, he
urged his father to come

‘AJl of a damn sweat, ain’t you^’ His father’s voice was
quiet and unperturbed But he did not rise

The light m the house was movmg now, going from
wmdow to wmdow, and finally Luke could see the yellow
glow of a candle held close agamst the glass of a wmdow
by the door As he made another appeal to his father to
get up, standing over him m helplessness and anger, the
dog barkmg more wildly than ever, the candle was drawn
away from the wmdow When it had gone the darkness

73

THE POACHER

seemed more intense than ever He saw nevertheless that
his father was getting up Ard half-putting his arms
about him he made as though to help him to his feet, but
with an immense effort Bishop shook him off and with a
great stagger uprighted himself
The door of the farmhouse opened suddenly as he stood
there Held low m the doorway, the candle threw its light
full across the dark garden, the long shadows of the old
fruit trees reaching slenderly to the road and the field
beyond As though seeing the light the dog began to tear
at Its chain with fresh terror, and a high voice, the voice
of a woman, was raised to quieten it
‘Rouser, be quiet, be quiet’ Will you be quiet
Finally, when the dog had quietened momentarily, only
whimpering in suppressed panic on its dribblmg cham,
the voice called mto the garden
‘Who’s there ^ Who is it^ Who’s there
As the voice called agam Bishop began to run, without
warning, at the old strong easy stride, as he had done m
the wood In the second or two before following him
Luke saw with strange clearness a young woman in the
doorway of the farmhouse her arrested attitude of alarm,
the candle fluttering in her hands, her light hair turned
lighter still at its soft edges by the near candlelight He
saw It all in a single moment with unforgettable clarity
before he, too, began to run and the old thick hedge of
hawthorn came between himself and the house, shuttmg
oflF the yellow-washed walls, the slender trees half-
illuminated with candlelight, and lastly, the candlelight
and the girl herself

They went on after that with constantly increasing
pauses dunng which Bishop half-crouched on the ground
on one knee, like a runner resting before a race He never
spoke except to answer the questions Luke put to him, his
tone sharp and impatient Finally he burst out ‘Ah,

74

YOUTH

shut up about it, shut up Ain’t I told ye I’m all right^
\m’t I told ye^’

They came to the familiar country about Nenweald m
the early morning It was almost two o’clock by the clock
m the latchen when they slipped into the house Bishop
sat down m the high-slatted wooden chair by the empty
fireplace Then in the darkness Luke took off his own
boots The little white terrier, half-asleep under the table
woke to hfe as they came in and Bishop called her to him
as he sat m the chair and she sprang softly up to him and
lay in his lap As the bitch leapt against him he gave a
sudden exclamation of pain The dog whimpered a little
and Bishop quietened her ‘Good gal, lay still, lay still ’
Luke stood with his boots m his hand, in the darkness,
waiting

‘You git off,’ Bishop said
‘Ain’t you commg^’

‘You git off’

It was the old relentless stubbornness of tone Without
waiting or speaking another word Luke opened the stairs
door and went up the wooden stairs soundlessly in his
stockinged feet, the motion of climbing the steps draining
his strength more than all the long running in the darkness
had done

When he came down again in the mornmg his father
was still sitting there, as he had left him, with the dog on
his knees His boots were half-unlaced, as though he had
tried to take them off, and the buttons of his trousers were
undone, showing the thickness of congealed blood on his
shirt where the shot had entered the groin
The dog had fallen asleep on his knees, and Bishop’s
head hung stiffly down on his chest as though he had
fallen asleep too

75

THE POACHER

4

The death of his father robbed him of all spirit He
stood helpless among sudden complexities His aunt lent
him a black suit of her late husband’s for the funeral and
he wore it as though in a dream^ moving about lifelessly,
feehng nothing, only an eternal deadness of spirit and
thought Like the suit, his grief seemed to have been
borrowed for the occasion He stood suspended in a
strange world that belonged neither to the past nor the
future, the past too painful to remember, the future havmg
no meaning for him After the funeral, in the evening, he
went m response to an mvitation that was almost like a
command to see his aunt, and while she talked to him he
sat by the table, as he had done so often, wine-glass m
hand, and stared at the fire shimng up through the red
wine Listening with the same unalterable deadness of
spirit that even the wine could not drive away, he knew
only half what she said She, too, was m black and she
looked like the black ghost of her former self, only the
inexorable quality of her voice unchanged

He scarcely uttered a word She was talking of the
future, never mentioning either the past or his father, as
though they had died with one another Though she did
not mention it he knew that she expected him to give up
the old life, and the spirit of resistance was so deadened in
him that he was ready to surrender to whatever she asked
He had not the heart to argue with her Ht don’t matter
a sight, one way or another,’ he kept thinking

She was talking of the lawyer’s office again and her
words took on a level, phlegmatic tone They came to
her lips easily, as though she had long since made up her
mind what she wanted to say She seemed also to have
taken for granted his own reception of them ‘And then

76

YOUTH

if you get on, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t,
they might take you into partnership You know what
that would mean^’ Listening unconsciously, he did not
answer her question, and as though to reassure him she
said, 'I’ll see that your mother don’t come to want ’ He
nodded at that and she resumed the steady recital of her
ambitions for him, painting the future a favourable rose,
just as the fire pinked the silky blackness of her funeral
dress

Finally, as she filled up his glass for the last time, she
asked him for the first time what he thought of it all
'I don’t want to hurry you,’ she said
‘I was going to say, I’d like to think it over ’

‘That’s It,’ she said 'You think it over ’

‘I am’t much of a writer,’ he said 'Neither a speller,
come to that ’

'Worse heads than yourn have got over that ’

'Soon as I get a pen in my hands I feel all buck-fisted,
somehow ’

'Your dad was a good writer,’ she said

'Ah, he wor that He never learnt me, though ’

'You couldn’t expect him,’ she flashed, 'to teach you
every mortal thing ’

The inference m her words was lost on him He went
away with the same deadness of spirit as he had come,
promising to think it over, to come back one evenmg and
let her know

But as he mooned about the meadows in the early
November days he could not make up his mind and
his old assurance did not return The mushrooms were
finished and towards the end of November the qiuet
weather broke up The long rams flooded the meadows
and bared the last of the trees Indoors, m the httle
tapping-shed at the end of the garden, he sat and worked
at his last, the rain penning him there all day For the

77

THE POACHER

first time m his life he became conscious of the emotion
of complete unhappiness Havmg lived a physical life
for so long he did not know what to do with a life filled
with such emotion and such quietness now that it had
come He sat and worked m a blind wretchedness, in a
silence broken only by his own hammer tapping, or the
ram, or sometimes only by the click of his stitching-
needle He sank into an even lower wretchedness at the
thought of his father and the past All his life had sprung
from his father, he began to see it very clearly as the days
went on He could think of nothing of importance in all
his life in which his father had not played a part, and
when the rams ended and he could go back to the meadows
and the river again he saw it more clearly still, the thought
of a life without him half-fnghtenmg him like the ex-
pectation of a terror

He went back to see his aunt at the begmnmg of Decem-
ber She seemed half-angry at the long mterval he had
taken to think over her proposals He did not tell her
that he had scarcely thought of them at all
‘You haven’t been up to the old games again she said
‘Ain’t seen a rabbit for long enough,’ he said
She poured the wine with some of her old air of down-
rightness, striking the cork of the bottle mto place with a
great blow of her hand

‘What made you come at alP’ she said
He was drinking his wine as she spoke and he wiped his
lips on the back of his hand before speaking again
‘Seems Hester’s goin’ to have a baby,’ he said
She took up her own wine-glass without a trace of sur-
prise ‘Who^’ she asked

‘Reeves Him as died They told me to-day ’

‘It doesn’t surprise you, does it^’

‘Wouldn’t matter if it did But if I go into the lawyer’s,
will you see the gal’s all right^’

78

YOUTH

® Shell be all right *

As though in silent thanks he took up his wine-glass and
drank again, remembering as he did so how often they
had sat there and bantered each other iromcally He felt
curiously chastened now
‘Dad knowed/ he said
For some reason she did not answer
‘Now I know what made him so mad about Reeves and
Baron I know now ’

Agam she did not answer and he sat m thought, re-
membering Reeves and harvest-time and his father’s
anger

It was his aunt who spoke at last
‘So youll go into the lawyer’s^’ she said
‘Ah,’ he said He had scarcely given it a moment’s
conscious thought, he was only vaguely aware that he
wanted to escape from the past he had known with his
father, mto a strange future in which the memory of him
could have no place

‘It’s either that, or ’list,’ he said

And for a moment he rather fancied himself as a soldier,
until she burst upon him half-furiously
‘ / should like * ’ she cried ‘ I should like * ’

‘Worse thmgs,’ he said ‘You can only get shot ’

‘You can do that here*’ she flashed
It silenced him He went back at once into the old
apathy of acquiescence, hstening to her proposals without
protest, ready to exchange the blind wretchedness of his
loss for anything

‘How would It be,’ she said, ‘if you came up, two or
three nights a week, and bettered your handwntmg a bit^
Two nights handwntmg, say, and one figures ’

‘Ah, I’d better I’m like a bull at haystack holding a
pen ’

‘And then, sometime after Christmas, you could start ’

79

THE POACHER

She rose from her chair, picked up the wine and fill ed
up his glass with an air of quiet sohcitude
‘And when does that baby come^’ she said
‘God a’mighty knows Christmas, I shouldn’t wonder ’
‘How would It be, then, if you made a fresh start in the
New Year^’ she said

He picked up his glass and then nodded m silence He
would make a new start, begin a new life The old was
finished

8o

PART II

THE MURDER

CHAPTER I

I

During the remaining days of December and on into the
early days of January he went to the house as she had
suggested, two or three evemngs a week, or even more if
the weather were bad, and she gave him lessons in hand-
wntmg and simple arithmetic He would sit on one side
of the table and she on the other, a pale rose tasselled
shawl spread over the mahogany and a sheet of newspaper
over the shawl to catch the ink-drops They would begin
with a glass of wine and end with one It was so warm and
comfortable there, with the fire and the wine, that a
curious sense of pleasant lethargy would come over him,
a feeling that nothing mattered She set him exercises
to copy, exercises of unexactmg simplicity which only
heightened that sense of unambitious lethargy And seeing
him sometimes grow bored with the slow copying or
multiplication she would suggest that he read mstead
‘Well both read,’ she would say ‘What book shall it be-
eh^’ And he would say, ‘Don’t matter to me ’ Then she
would pick up the lamp and take it to the bookshelves
and make a pretence of searching among the titles ‘Sup-
posing we read Fox’s Martyrs'^ ^ The book was always the
same and as she read from it, slowly and smoothly, know-
mg the words off by heart, he would fall half-asleep m
that dim atmosphere of wine and soft words and mellow
lamplight

And gradually, from the lengthening habit of it all, the
lethargy itself began to grow habitual He was vaguely
conscious of gomg physically soft He no longer got up
m the early mornings, the days on which he had helped

83

THE POACHER

to towel Reeves in the first cold daylight seemed like the
days of another life In the mornings now he would he m
bed until he could hear his mother’s movements down-
stairs and the hiss of frymg bacon, and he would come
downstairs with a half-sleepy slouch, sitting huddled
before the fire in his shirt-sleeves, unwashed, until she
brought his breakfast The days went past him like so
many beads on a string, one like another He slipped
gradually and unconsciously into a state of physical de-
generation His muscles lost their tightness like a bladder
slowly losing its air And he did not notice the change m
himself until, following one day with the hounds, his wind
broke and the dead flabbiness of his muscles would not
carry him, his legs weighing him down and his heart
thundering against the pam of his lungs After that, re-
membering his father and the length of their runs together
and that steady, inexhaustible stride of Bishop’s, he felt
half-ashamed Going to bed with a strong desire to reform
himself and to renew the runs in the early mornmg, he
woke early the next morning, remembered, and then got
out of bed and went to the wmdow In the winter morning
darkness it was raining bitterly, m a wild wind And as he
heard the wind tearing across the empty darkness of the
nver valley and everywhere the heavy running bitterness
of the rain his enthusiasm vanished and he went back to
bed

He went on hke this, resolving and doing nothing and
sinking into an even lower lethargy and degeneration, not
caring if he went into the lawyer’s office or even what he
did or what happened to him, until the day his sister’s
baby was bom The child was born in the early afternoon
and he could hear his sister’s mtermittent cnes aU mornmg
above the noise of his hammer m the tapping-shop
Towards noon he left the shop and went up mto the house,
calhng upstairs when he found the rooms downstairs

84

THE MURDER

empty No one answered him He could hear only the
dull grunting moans of Hester and the lowered voices of
Sal and his mother He called again and there was no
answer Then as he stood there his mother came down-
stairs, her gipsyish hair straggling down over her face and
her sleeves rolled to the elbows She went past him into
the kitchen as though he did not exist and he followed her,
half-complaming 'Am't there going to be no dinner^'
She came to life in a flash at his words ‘What dinner
you have m this house to-day, you get yourself^ ’

Before he could answer she hurried past him upstairs and
he stood there at a loss, half-mechamcally rolling down his
shirt-sleeves, half-stupidly listenmg to the renewed soimd
of moans and voices from above
And suddenly, sick of it all and sick of himself, he took
off his leather-stamed shoe-apron and put on his jacket
and his black muffler and cut himself some slices of bread
and cheese in the kitchen, stuffing some of the bread into
his mouth and then folding the cheese between the rest,
as his father had always done, and puttmg it mto his pocket
Outside the air was cold, with a sense of snow He
walked quickly as he went through the town, skirtmg
behind the Square, and out towards the bare flat country
As he walked across the wintry fields the wind came
straight from the east mto his face He could see the
clouds extendmg mto the farthest distance like a senes of
shaggy waves, infinitely grey and sombre He felt a sense
of relief and pleasure as he walked and looked at the
familiar country, deserted except for the sheep lying quiet
under the hedges m the treeless fields and the flocks of
peewits feeding on the dark ploughed land
As he reached the higher country above Tichmarsh,
under the shelter of the great belt of woods, the wmd
seemed to quieten down He chmbed the slope and looked
back the village with its square-towered church, the httle

83

THE POACHER

white pub, the quiet bare fields beyond were all as familiar
to him as his own hands And for the first time in his life
it gave him a conscious pleasure simply to stand there and
look at It all

It began to snow a little as he went on and down through
the woods on the other side of the hill The soft vague
flakes seemed to be falling from the shaken branches of
the trees He hardly noticed them Under the trees, out
of the wmd, there was a curious winter stillness over every-
thing, the birds hushed, the rabbits rustling the dead
leaves quietly

Suddenly as he came out from under the trees into an
open stretch of road it began to snow thickly and fiercely
The snow was driven out of the east m a great white cloud
He went on m spite of it, not sheltering, only turning up
his jacket collar with the old habitual careless gesture of
one hand It was the first snow of the winter It began to
fall with increasing heaviness as he went on, as though it
had been pent up somewhere, the large soft flakes already
whitening the grass and the exposed branches of the higher
trees Then gradually the land became deserted Nothing
moved across it except himself and the endless flakes of
snow The feeling of the cold silence and the solitude and
the snow itself refreshed him The snowflakes covered his
chest with a thick pad of white His eyes were dazzled by
the frenzy of fallmg flakes and the whiteness of the earth
where the snow had settled

At the foot of the slope it began to snow even faster and
he turned and began to retrace his steps The road was
covered now, the snow like white velvet, his footsteps
soundless Looking back he could see the blackish prints
his soles had made in the road, and then, farther beyond
the road and the trees, the mfinite whitish darkness of the
snow commg thickly out of the east, as though it would
never end

8b

THE MURDER

Back at the crest of the hill he left the road and struck
away diagonally across the fields, almost mechanically, in
spite of the snow he found the old path that he and his
father had used The grassland was already white, the
grass crisp under the thickness of snow As he went across
the first pasture a rabbit limped away from him towards
the lower hedge, its ears flat in fright against its neck The
rabbit moved awkwardly, m alternate runs and jumps,
as though lame And almost without thinking he began
to run after it The rabbit began to run a httle faster as
he hunted it, making for the hedge Luke ran in half-
stooping fashion, his hands low and outstretched, the speed
of his running increasing the speed of the snow until he was
half-blinded Finally the rabbit disappeared, then as he
reached the hedge he saw it again, skulking against the
slope of the ditch Before he could do anything it had
begun to move again, running along the ditch with the
same hmping movement, and he followed it, runnmg along
the bank with the same outstretched attitude of his hands

Suddenly, almost at the end of the ditch, he came to a
standstill He let the rabbit make its escape through the
hedge-bottom into the field beyond He stood m the
di^ch and stared

A man was lying in a strange attitude, face upwards, m
the ditch The snow had ceased a little A few flakes had
fallen on the dead face without meltmg and on the fair
stiflF moustache

Standing there, staring, wiping the half-wet flakes of
snow from his face as though he could not see, Luke felt a
rush of sickness and terror He saw even before he bent
down and moved the body a little and wiped a few of the
snowflakes from the stiff face and then wiped his hands
mechanically on his breeches that the man was the keeper,
Baron Having once moved he stood there as though
frozen, not knowmg what to do His hands hung straight

87

THE POACHER

and limp against his flanks A look of extreme terror
rested on B3iron’s face It seemed to communicate itself
to him, doubhng his own

It began to snow heavily agam as he stood there
Staring at the dead keeper, he was not conscious of the
snow The large light flakes began to fall on the keeper’s
face They came down with great force They were so
thick and white that he could not see And momentarily
he suffered an hallucmation It seemed to him for a
moment that the keeper was no longer there
He began to walk away After a yard or two he paused
and looked back He saw the keeper agam with unex-
pected clarity He could see now that there was blood on
his chest He could see it because the fresh snow had
turned qmte crimson m a small patch below the heart
The buttons of the jacket had been shattered, he could see
the ragged threads of cotton hanging where the buttons
had once been

He began to move away agam, half-runnmg instmctively
Almost immediately he stopped agam A voice was shout-
mg m the next field It was a woman’s voice, she seemed
to be calhng m her hens from the snow Her voice was
raised m a fine wail, the snow and the wind deadening it
at mtervals and snatchmg it away
The next moment he saw her She was coimng up the
field Her apron, dirty white agamst the snow, was hooded
over her head and she was clasping its corners close under
her chin, waihng for the hens as she came along ‘ Chucka '
Chucka ' Chuck ' Chucka ' ’ He stood alert, watchmg her
And then, liftmg her head to let out a fresh wail and to
search the field, she saw him
Somethmg m his alertness and terror arrested her imme-
diately He did what he knew to be a foohsh thing almost
before he had done it, the consciousness of his foohshness
and the act itself were almost simultaneous He ducked

88

THE MURDER

swiftly under the hedge She saw him And there was a
second of silence before she let out a high wail of alarm
It was surprised from her almost involuntarily The words
were lost on him, smothered by the snow and dnven away
by the wind But their tone of frantic alarm was so un-
mistakable that he went sick with fresh terror He stood
for another second as though frozen there The woman’s
alarm rose into accusation She was running up the field
He could hear her feet slithering wildly m the snow ‘ I see
ye^ I see ye’’ As she came nearer he caught for the first
time the words she was shouting It did not strike him until
that moment that she was coupling him with her lost hens
But by that time it was too late He was already running
wildly up the field

2

Before the end of the afternoon he was already in strange
country It was still snowing The snow was above the
tops of his boots The road and the grass had been levelled
into one unrippled surface from hedge to hedge, the drifts
rising against the hedges m deep wmd-smoothed arcs The
fields were empty of everything except that deep whiteness,
the ploughed lands as white as the roads and the pastures
He was walking steadily His terror and the foohshness
that had come with it had almost vanished A little re-
mained, enough to rise up at intervals and fill him with a
brief sickness and panic agam He was walking now with
a solitary purpose He knew now that there was only one
thing for him to do, he must go on m a wide circle, as his
father had so often done, beanng to the eastward and then
gradually to northward, and so back to Nenweald under
cover of the snow and the darkness He knew that he had
already gone almost far enough to the east The notion
that he might be connected with the dead keeper had

89

THE POACHER

scarcely occurred to him The memory of the dead face
under the hedge, except for its horror, did not touch him
He was safe from it It had nothing to do with him Once
his terror and horror had vanished he had only one fear,
the fear of the woman’s voice wailing its accusation at him
across the field His desire to escape from it was habitual,
almost unconscious It occurred to him once or twice that
the woman was looking not for her hens, but for Baron
himself Even that did not alarm him, since his father had
long since taught him never to meet trouble until it came
When he turned from the road at last and began to bear
to the east, meeting the wind, he began for the first time
to feel tired He had eaten nothing since morning His
eyes and limbs ached from the perpetual whiteness and
heaviness of snow Then with something like joy he re-
membered the bread and cheese in his pocket He began
to eat it as he walked along

He had scarcely begun to eat the bread and cheese when
he saw the shepherd’s hovel The straw hurdles had been
built together under a high hedge of hawthorn, near the
road The wind and the snow, coming together, flung
themselves against him furiously Almost without pausing
to think he climbed the field gate and went into the hovel,
not seeing the shepherd there until he had sat heavily
down on the straw

The shepherd sat m the corner of the hut, half-covered
with straw He gazed at Luke with mild eyes, unastomshed
Sitting down, Luke felt for the first time the completeness
of his own exhaustion When the shepherd spoke he
answered mechanically The bread and cheese tluckened
his words The fragrance of dry straw and the calm in
the hut after the wind were blissful He discovered that he
had hardly the strength to knock the snow off his chest
^Come far^’ said the shepherd
‘About far enough,’ he said, ‘m this ’

90

THE MURDER

He had almost finished the bread and cheese before the
shepherd spoke agam The sheep dog, a big shaggy iron-
coloured dog, had come over to him to hck his hands
The warm moist caressmg motion of the dog’s tongue
seemed to deepen his weariness

T don’t recollect you,’ the shepherd said ‘Where ye
going’’

‘Nenweald ’ He said it without thinkmg and without
surpnse

‘Out o’ your way, am’t ye’’

He did not answer the words and did not thmk much
about them The dog went on lickmg his hands, the
motion soothing him Outside it was snowing harder
than ever Stray flakes floated down mto the hut, settlmg
lightly on the straw Looking at the snow he saw for the
first time that the sky was growmg visibly darker ‘What
clock IS It’’ he said This time the shepherd did not
answer He was lookmg at the blood that had dried on
the fingers of Luke’s right hand The dog’s wet mouth
had heightened the colour of it from sepia to pink Luke
looked at it too Until that moment he had not seen it
He had not even suspected that he might have blood on
his hands Half-mechanically he picked up some of the
snow that had fallen firom his chest and began to wash off
the blood Then he remembered as he did so why he had
not seen it before He had walked all the time with his
han ds m his pockets The spasm of fear that had shot up
m him at the sight of the blood vanished immediately
Without thmlmg, he got up to go While he was stand-
mg at the door of the hut, watching the snow falhng stiU
as thick as ever but now out of an mcreasmgly darker sky,
the dog ran out into the field Turmng, he saw that the
shepherd had nsen too
‘We may as well go together,’ he said
They walked out of the hut and across the field and mto

91

THE POACHER

the road The snow was half up to their knees and the dog
buried to its shoulders After the shelter of the hedge and
the calmness in the hut the wind seemed funous The
shepherd walked slowly Luke, tired, fell mto the same
pace, a sudden feeling of irresolution coming over him, a
feeling that he did not want to go on
He began to feel also, as they walked slowly on against
the wind, that he would not get back to Nenweald that
night At first the thought was scarcely conscious It was
a mere sensation, a vague part of his physical weariness
It was only when something made him ask the shepherd
‘How far would Nenweald be from here^’ and he heard
the shepherd answer, ‘Thirteen or fourteen miles,’ that the
thought leapt into full consciousness He could hardly
realize even then, in spite of his weariness, how far he had
come He knew vaguely that it was the dead heavmess
and the stark whiteness of the snow that had made him
so tired The distance was nothing Looking back, he
could retrace every step of it It was only when he looked
forward, into the infinite distance of darkness and snow,
that he began to feel desperate and afraid
He began to see also how foolish he had been He
ought never to have run from the woman’s accusing voice
He saw that now What had made him run^ Why had he
done that^ He began to see the folly of it so clearly that
his fear returned It came back to him m a spasm of
anguish and shivering, the shivermg so physical and
evident that the shepherd saw it
‘You ain’t very hot, I know ’

He made a supreme effort to speak The words did not
come and he felt a spasm of anger against himself He
heard the shepherd say

‘You better come along o’ me and git thawed a bit ’
‘No, rU git along,’ he said

He was talking mechanically, with some unconscious

92

THE MURDER

part of himself He did not want to refuse He did not
want to go on

‘The missusll be glad to give you some tea *

‘No/ he said agam, ‘I’ll git along ’

Even as he spoke he was amazed at the depth of his own
folly and obstinacy He tried to struggle with it It was
then that he discovered how weak he was He could
scarcely lift his feet through the weight of snow His
hands were numb His folly arose out of pure weakness,
out of a kmd of strengthless perversity He knew even
before the shepherd spoke again that he could not go on
They walked along the road for almost another mile
before the shepherd spoke It was still snowing The wind
seemed to be blowing the darkness across the endlessly flat
fields from the east, a darkness of snow and twihght
together

‘The missus’ll git on to me,’ the shepherd said, ‘if I tell
her and you don’t come in ’

They came to a solitary yellow bnck house that stood
m the roadside behind a tlucket of holly trees From a
lamp shining in one of the windows the hght fell yeUow
on the snow There was no other house in sight The
land stretched out into the same infimte flatness on all
sides, as though the snow had levelled it Looking at that
desolate flatness of strange coimtry he had no need to
think before he spoke again
‘All right,’ he said ‘I’ll come m ’

As they left the road and walked towards the house he
felt the lonelmess of the place It gave him a sense of
secunty

3

When he came out of the house agam darkness had
fallen, but the snow had ceased The shepherd came as

93

THE POACHER

far as the road with him, shming a lantern, advising htn ?
'Be a good tip if you went back past the hovel, that way,
the way you come ’ He began to go back along the road,
the shepherd waving the lantern He turned up the collar
of his jacket as he walked, holding it together under his
chin with one hand, grasping the ash-stick the shepherd
had given him in the other The stick had been whittled
at the knob into the shape of a dog’s head and worn to the
smoothness of ice by prolonged use The smooth feeling
of the stick, the presence of the shepherd and the hght of
the lantern on the snow gave him a feeling of immense
assurance When at last he turned round again the
shepherd had gone and he could not see the house in the
darkness

He began to walk with the old steadmess The wind
had died down with the snow, but now it was freezing
bitterly The air was quiet and more brittle at every step
he took He was no longer tired The snow, dned and
lightened already by the fierceness of frost, was very soft
and almost pleasant to walk upon It scarcely checked his
progress

As he walked he made his calculations, how he would
walk steadily on m the snow, and how, reckomng it then
to be five o’clock and reckoning the shepherd’s distance
to Nenweald correct, he would be home before nine
o’clock He let his mind run on in expectation He had
already made his decision as to the way he would go He
would go straight back, keeping to the roads and the
villages, calling perhaps at the White Hart for a pint and a
rest He would hear something there of the murder Then
he began to see what had never occurred to him in his
pamc and foUy, that it might not have been a murder at
all, but simply a smcide, even an accident In the clear
frost-quiet air, after the warmth and the rest of the
shepherd’s house, he felt extraordinarily rational All his

94

THE MURDER

fears except one had vanished That was the fear of the
woman’s wailing at him across the field And he was
troubled less and less even by that as he went on
The sky began to clear and a star or two came out,
shimng as though with frost, as he walked The snow had
covered the tracks he had made in the early afternoon It
was light enough^ with the few stars and the strange light
coming up from the snow, for him to see that
He found the roads easily, though he was tiring again
by the time he reached the crest of the hill above Tich-
marsh He could feel the familiarity of the country then,
recognizing the woods and the trees as he came to them
Some of his fear returned as he chmbed the slope, trickling
back thinly like the cold m his vems and his weariness
It came back in an overpowering and sudden rush as
he began to go down the slope by the field where he had
run away from the woman in the afternoon It came back
with such force that he came to an abrupt standstill Bbs
heart was like ice His hands fell from the sheer weight of
their own weakness against his legs
Half-way down the hill the road was blocked with a
crowd of people He could hear the confused whisper of
their voices The darkness was filled with excitement He
could see the black shape of a trap drawn up across the
road, the hght yellow on the wheels and the road He
could hear the dull thudding of restless and stampmg feet
in the snow The sound made a soft thunder of accom-
paniment to the inarticulate whisper of voices nsmg and
falling in the still air

He stood there for a mmute in a kind of strengthless
immobility He was breathing very fast, m a series of
irregular gasps, through his mouth It was his only
physical motion The rest of him seemed to have become
lifeless, just as his mmd had become dead except for a
single repeated thought

95

THE POACHER

‘I’m done for,’ he kept thmking ‘I’m done for ’

He acted at last from an impulse of pure terror The
impulse that had made him run from the woman m the
field made him move again He was still a hundred yards
or more from the hghts He went across the verge of the
road with a suddeimess of activity which startled even
himself, moving with extreme softness m the snow Then
once over the fence in the field, he began to run He ran
doubled up, keeping to the hedge, where the snow was
thinnest, running almost the length of the field before
breabng through the hedge and traversmg the comer of
the field beyond

It was only then that he realized where he was The
field was the one from which the woman and her wailing
voice had hounded him m the afternoon He turned at
once and broke back through the hedge, runnmg west-
wards, fallmg and slithermg across the ditches m the
haste and panic of his fresh terror
He ran on like that, scrambling and falhng up to his
waist m the drifts and the ditches, until he could no
longer see the lanterns or hear the voices

4

Though he had only a vague idea of it then and did not
know it for certamty until long after, the roads to the east
and south of Nenweald were blocked that mght at all
pomts of importance by httle squads of pohce and volun-
teers They were searching, m spite of the warnmg the
woman had given m the afternoon, not for him, but for a
young soldier, a deserter He knew that, too, only long
afterwards As he rsm and shthered on m the darkness and
the snow, he was never without the conviction that they
were searching for him The thought renewed alternately

96

THE MURDER

his strength and terror He kept as much as he could to
the fields, runmng under the protection of the hedges
Occasionally he went through a belt of woodland There,
under the trees, where the snow had scarcely covered the
leaves, it was easier for him The whole countryside was
silent There seemed to be no life, nothing moving about
the snow except himself, and the quietness seemed
ommous It froze bitterly as he went on, a still, black frost
The stars increased, flashing as though firozen also He
left the Pole star on his right hand, and a little behind him,
conscious of a feehng of greater safety when his face was
turned to the south

As he went on he gave up, unconsciously, the thought of
retummg home It already seemed years smce he had
left It He wanted only to escape and if possible to rest
When he did rest it was only for bnef intervals He
sprawled against a fence or squatted under a hedge,
panting and choking with great gasps for breath He felt
that if he ever sat down he would never get up again So
he rested as little as possible He would go to what he
thought was the limit of his physical endurance, and then
beyond it, and then to what he thought was the limit again,
and then beyond that, saying to himself H’U get through
another field, I’ll get past the end of the hedge, FU get
through another field,’ the words repeated and repeated
in time with the heavy runmng sound of his feet Fmally,
resting in a wood, half-kneeling, stiU not daring to sit
down, he was so utterly exhausted that, as he knelt there
on the snowless leaves of oak and hazel, he rubbed his
hands to and fro across his face for the sheer comfort of his
own touch And domg so, he caught the smell of leather
on his hands, the still strong greasy odour of the boots he
had been makmg that mormng It gave him an inex-
plicable sense of comfort And as he sat there he ran his
hands over his face agam and agam, smeUing the leather

97

THE POACHER

smell eagerly until finally he felt that it had given him
back his strength

Soon after he had gone on again he came to a road, he
was standing on it before he was aware of it And stoppmg
to consider where he was and which way he should take,
he felt for the first time the desperation and hopelessness of
his everlasting misery He saw clearly how things had
worked and were working against him the woman’s cry
of accusation, the blood the shepherd had seen on his hands,
his own foohshness Then he began to see that they were
all httle or nothing against the fact that he was a poacher,
that his father had been a poacher, and that his father had
hated Baron and had gone about the coimtryside threaten-
mg revenge Lastly he saw that he himself might be sus-
pected of revenge too If the pohce were looking for any-
body at all they were looking for him And cunously,
through all the years of poachmg and defiance of the law,
he had never been in the hands of the police It was the
thing he dreaded above all others
And standmg there, trying to make up his mind which
way to go and with the thought of his father and the pohce
and his own folly and hopelessness commg back to him,
he heard the sound of feet in the snow
For some reason he could not run The footsteps were
coming rapidly towards him But he stood as though
frozen, waiting for them to come He was almost resolved
at that moment to surrender
He had no sooner thought of it than he wanted to run
And almost simultaneously he knew that it was too late
Whoever it was coming along the road had seen him
They were caUing him There were two voices For some
reason they did not alarm him He listened to them qmte
calmly Finally he went towards them with almost a sense
of relief

It was not until he saw the figures of the two constables

98

THE MURDER

and they began questioning him that his fear returned It
shot up in him in a single spasm and died After that he
could only stand there and hsten and answer their ques-
tions m a kind of resigned stupor

‘Who are you^ What are you doing ^ Where are you
going^ ’ Their questions seemed part of some mechamcal
rigmarole learnt off by heart He answered mechamcally
too, his answers coming to his astonishment smoothly,
meekly, without effort
‘I’m lookmg for a dog ’

‘What dog^ What sort of dog^*

‘Black He’s only a pup ’

‘What’s your name^’

‘Simpson ’

‘What are you doing along this road^*

‘I’m looking for the dog I told you ’

‘This road don’t go nowhere ’

‘The dog don’t know that ’

His old drawhng tone of contempt astounded him
‘None o’ your chelp We’ve got serious busmess on
What did you say your name was^’

‘ Simpson ’

‘Remember that, Joe ’

‘Fred Simpson ’

‘Fred Simpson Remember that ’

He stood there apathetic and half-indifferent, not
knowing how he made up the hes and sustamed them,
not caring whether they were believed or not Finally
one of the constables began to repeat the name he had
given, speaking in a tone half-rummative, half-ommous
‘Simpson, Simpson It seems familiar Simpson^’ and at
last

‘Where’d you say you came from^’

‘Nowhere particular ’

Without warning the constable reached out and snatched

99

THE POACHER

off his hat, leaning nearer as he did so to look at his black
hair and sallow face

H thought so A gyppo *

Then, just as he had done in the field when the woman
had seen him first, he did a thing he knew to be foolish
even before he had done it He lifted his fist and struck the
constable powerfully m the mouth, knocking him back-
wards m the snow He felt the sharp pain of the man’s
teeth on his knuckles as though the mouth had been
opened m protest or astomshment It was a brief sharp
pam, exhilarating By the time it had vanished he was
running up the road, the second constable after him,
shouting

He ran madly Half-turning to look back after a
moment or two he saw that the constable had given up,
had gone back to help the other It made no difference
to him He continued to run

It was only when he was in the fields agam, stiU runmng
and shthenng desperately along the ditches, that he re-
membered his cap The constable still had it He remem-
bered a second later that he had lost also the stick the
shepherd had given him The stick and the cap clues
against him And as he went on his thoughts seemed to
become concentrated mto a single repeated phrase of
despondency and despair ‘You’re done for now, you’re
done for, you’re done for.*

100

CHAPTER II

I

H E came out of the church soon after seven o^clock m the
mommg It was still dark The snow had frozen every-
where into a bitter ice It was as smooth as glass m the
footprints and cart-ruts along the road The church was
under repair Scaffold planks were half-buned by snow
under the shelter of the walls outside, the nave cluttered
with the straw tool bags of the workmen and the still un-
sawn planks against which he had knocked his shins as he
blundered about in the darkness of the mght before
The church stood sohtary, apart from its village, and the
road went downhill away from it He walked rapidly In
the east the black winter mommg darkness was just
touched with light As the thin colourless break in the
blackness widened he began to see the road, then the
hedges, then the expanse of fields and woods under the
snow He was walking along the top of a ridge There
were many woods young spruce spinneys and thin old
woods of oak or pine The pines held the snow in great
cakes on their thick needles As the hght came up he
looked for a landmark But he could see nothing, not even
a spire, that was famihar It was strange country It
looked even stranger and more remote under the snow
Once, turning, he looked back for the church It had
vanished, cut off by the thick woodland He went on
with a feelmg of increasmg lonehness He felt strangely
cut off from the world, from his own fears and also from the
events of the day before The stillness of the air was bitter
There was no hope of warmth, the sun came up slowly,
whitish and cold Then he ran a htde way in the first cold

lOI

THE POACHER

sunlight, pumping his arms and stamping his feet He
had taken off his boots m the church in order to rest and
dry his feet, and in the stone coldness his feet had got still
colder and the circulation had never begun again After
a few yards he gave up the running For some reason his
body seemed empty of strength and the frozen air, breathed
fast, as like a series of bitter stabs at his lungs

He stood still at last to rest And standing there, think-
ing that what was the matter with him was not the cold
or the weanness, but only that he had not eaten anything,
he saw for the first time the nver flowing in the low-lying
land under the ridge It was a wide stream, intricate and
slow-flowmg Vanishmg and reappearing among the
copses on its banks it went away finally into a distance of
level meadows The water was sluggish and drab with
snow, a yellowish colour He stood arrested, startled for
the moment mto the wild thought that it was the nver he
had known all his life Then he saw that he did not know
It at all He could see, even under the thickness of the
snow, that there was no towmg path The meadows came
flat and unchecked to the water's edge Not that it mat-
tered He went on again The road turned with a bend
in the ndge, and the nver, cut off for a moment by a
copse of fir, reappeared He saw it flowing away into the
flat country ilhmitably white with snow Not that it
mattered Not that anythmg mattered If he was done
for, he was done for He had gone beyond the extent of
his own fears mto a hstlessness of indiflFerence He only
wanted to eat

Once the thought of eating had entered his mind he
could not shift it His hxmger and the cold were part of
one another His thoughts of eating became part of them
both, persistent and mcreasmg Thmkmg of the food he
forgot the constables, the woman crying after him up the
field, the shepherd, the dead face of the keeper under the

102

THE MURDER

hedge They merged together into a meaningless past
He even forgot what they had ever meant to him

He went on for almost another mile before the con-
sciousness of what he was doing struck him fully He was
looking for houses^ now, where he had previously wanted
to avoid them The realization of it came to him without
fear, without an emotion of any kind at all It was a fact
He had not the strength to dispute the wisdom or the folly
of it any longer

He had gone beyond the nver, and out of sight of it,
when he came to the first house He stood by the hedge,
on the roadside He stood up to his knees in dnft that had
piled up under the hedge He looked at the place It was
a small farmhouse there was a hen-yard between the
hedge and the front porch, and beyond, in the fenced-in
paddock, a bush-hovel housing a trap and a land-cart and
odds and ends of htter and harness He could sec it all
clearly in the rising light, against the white backgroimd of
snow He stood staring He stood for perhaps five minutes,
taking in the place, making up his mind Durmg that time
he saw no signs of life The snow across the hen-yard was
clean and level, just as it had fallen He could see where
the wind had driven the snow m a smooth arc against the
front door, which had not been opened

He waited a little longer Then he went round to the
back of the house The view was almost the same the
untrodden hen-yard, the smooth snowdnft against the
unopened door But now he could see the hens, in a low
wired-in coop half-covered by sacks that the wmd and
snow had frozen against the wire The coop stood four or
five yards from the haystack behmd which he was stand-
ing He could see the hens, about a dozen of them,
reddish-brown and white, huddled together on the muck-
caked perches

He was standing there looking at them, wondermg at

103

THE POACHER

the silence of the place, when the back door opened A
woman came out She came straight across the yard, m a
direct Ime for him, rapidly, as though she had seen him
He took a single look at her and then hid himself again,
pressmg himself flat against the stack
He knew in another moment that it was all right, that
she had come only to feed the hens Nevertheless he dared
not move He stood ngid, hearing the great plods of her
feet m the snow, the trap-door of the hen-house jerked up,
her ‘Tchk ’ Tchk ' ’ to the hens She seemed so near once,
and her breath mdrawn in such sharp gasps that he ex-
pected any moment to see her come behind the stack
And when nothmg happened and he heard her return
across the yard and shut the door, and he could hear
nothing but the subdued flutter of the hens and their
hard beak-taps on the food-bowl, he still could not move

He stood for about a minute before danng to stir again
It seemed longer He had pressed himself so hard against
the stack that he wa's stiff Looking out at last, he saw what
the woman had brought the hens two shallow bowls of
bread-mash spnnkled and half-mixed with wheat bran
The mash was hot He saw the vapour rising thinly from
the bowls in the dark hen-house Then he caught a breath
of soft bran-smell and the steamy odour of hot sopped
bread

It smelled so warm and fragrant that he did not think
before he acted He took onlv a single look at the trap-
door m the hen-house It was low down, about a foot
from the floor The stnng which held it went up over a
httle white chma pulley and was tied to a hook m the
woodwork The bowls of hen food had been put on the
floor, at arm’s length from the trap The hens had already
half eaten them Their rapid beak-taps, hard m the glazed
stone bowls, were the only sounds in the frozen air

He came out from behind the stack with amazmg quiet-

104

THE MURDER

ness and rapidity to pull up the trap-door The stnng
shpped with almost startling smoothness through his
fingers, without a sound Half-kneehng m the snow he
did not trouble to look round to see if the woman were
returmng He saw nothing but the bowls of mash and the
pecking hens which he struck aside with his hands He
could reach the food-bowl easily It was the hens which
troubled him He had scarcely put his hands through the
trap-door when they set up their fiightened squawkmg,
maikmg short flights of protest, falhng over one another,
clucking madly

But the hens and the sounds they made did not trouble
him for more than a second or two He dragged the food-
bowl desperately along the muck-caked floor of the hen-
house, spilhng the mash Then he hfted it rapidly out
through the trap-door He began to eat almost before the
trap-door had fallen agam, scooping up the now warm
mash with his hands, cramming it into his mouth, bolting
It down, scarcely tasting it or knowing what he did

He had already decided, half-consciously, to reach for
the second bowl after he had eaten the first And he was
having a kind of race with the hens, fevenshly looking at
them from the corners of his eyes, when he heard the back
door of the bouse open and the quick running plods of
the woman’s feet commg across the snow Even then he
did not look up There was a httle of the sop left m the
bowl, the bottoms, more water than bread He wanted
to finish It He would still have time to fimsh it and then
run The woman, with her large, heavy ploddmg feet,
could never catch him

It was only when she shouted at him ‘Here’’ and he
looked up that he saw that it was too late to nm She was
not more than four or five yards away when she shouted
He stood upright, droppmg the bowl simultaneously,
cramming the wet sop mto his mouth Even then he felt

105

THE POACHER

that he could escape He even began to run, looking first
this way and then that, before she shouted again
'Here, here’ I want you’ Here’ I want you’’

All the strength and desire to run went out of him at
once He stood perfectly still Only his mouth moved as
he sucked down the last mouthful of mash And as she
came across the snow, moving with astonishing rapidity
for so large a woman, he felt his body go listless
She stood before him, panting Her large bust swelled
under her tight cotton pinafore It seemed almost a
mmute before she could speak
'Bum you’ What d’ye think I’m made on, eh^ What
made you take that hens’ food^’

He did not answer She had a rich, peremptory voice
It was full not so much of anger as astonishment
'What made you^’ she repeated
He was silent
'Why didn’t you ask^’

He still said nothing She, too, stood as though at a loss
for fresh words They stood like that for half a minute,
his mind vacant, she still panting for breath
It was she who spoke at last
'Ain’t I seen you somewhere^’

He stared, shaking his head wildly Christ, he was done
for

'I know I seen you—somewhere I don’t know where,
but somewhere ’

'No, no,’ he said
'Where d’ye come from^’

He did not answer And she stood scrutinizing him as
though to find some answer herself
'Coming and nicking folks’ hen-food, conung in here
hke that Why didn’t you ask^’

'I-^’

'I know I’d seen you somewhere ’

io6

THE MURDER

‘You’re wrong, missus, youVe— ’

She cut him short again, the words hke a thunderbolt
‘ Am’ t your name Bishop^ Am’tthatit^’

He went sick ‘No,’ he said ‘No, no ’ His voice was
strained and a little wild He had no control over it
‘No, no,’ he kept saying ‘You’re wrong, missus, you’re
wrong ’

She spoke again with a voice of unexpected quietness,
almost as though to soothe him and set him at rest
‘I know your Dad,’ she said ‘You can’t get away from
It I know your Dad ’

‘That’s where you’re wrong*’ he said desperately ‘I
ain’t got one ’

‘Not Buck Bishop^ Ain’t that him^’

‘No,’ he kept saymg ‘No, No ’

And after a moment or two she seemed to give it up
She seemed to become for the first time conscious of his
aspect of wearmess and wild dejection She stood looking
searchmgly at him at the snow scattered and caked on
his legs and chest, the thorn-scratches hvid and half-dried
on his face and hands, the strengthless droop of his arms
at his side

‘You look gay,’ she said
‘I feel It ’

He uttered the words almost defiantly The next
moment he regretted them And as though in sudden
contrition he said

‘That’s right about me What you said It’s right ’
‘Why’d you say that about yoiur Dad^’

‘He’s dead That’s why ’

She stood silent Some of the hen-mash, now cold, still
clung to his chm and mouth She stood watching him
lick it off, weakly She could see that he was famished
His face was dead-white, the snow reflection dnviug away
the last of its yellowish pallor

107

THE POACHER

‘What are you doing out here^ ’ she said at last ‘ Where
are you going

‘Nowhere ’

‘Ain’t you got summat better to do than steal folks’ hen-
mash^’

He did not answer And she said

‘Your Dad never learnt you fool’s tricks like that, I
warrant ’

Something in her words took the last of his resistance
away from him It was as though a trap-door opened
inside him and all his fortitude and ease and even his
physical control dropped suddenly through it beyond
recovery Tears began to run down his cheeks wi&out
warning, from sheer weakness, before he was aware of it
He let them come without a motion or sign of resistance
As they rolled down his cheeks and into his half-opened
mouth he had not the strength to utter a sound

‘You’d better come mside,’ she said ‘Come on, come
on ’

He followed her half-blindly across the yard

2

Indoors, m the kitchen that looked out on the yard and
the hen-house, he discovered how cold he was Sitting
over the fire, shuddermg, he was so cold that he was not
quite conscious of what was happening She brought him
a mug of coffee, with a bitter taste, like that of burnt
parsmps He drank it without knowing what it was He
expected every moment to hear other footsteps and other
voices, but nothing happened And after bringing him a
hunch of bread and bacon and a second mug of coffee she
came and sat by the fire also He felt sick, then, whenever
he thought of the hen-mash He put his hand over his

loB

THE MURDER

mouth whenever he retched His skin was like stone, he
could feel the veins on the backs of his hands standing
out hke stiff hard tubes, as though the blood m them had
frozen solid

‘You been out all night, I know,^ she said at last
‘Ain’t you^’

‘Ah ’ He had not the strength or control over himself
to explain about the church His face was so drawn and
stiff that he hardly formed even the single syllable
‘You ain’t done that for nothing,’ she said
He sat dumb and stupefied
‘What was it^’ she said

He tried to say something, but without success His
mouth opened and closed weakly
‘I knowed your Dad,” she said then ‘It’s all nght I
am’t going to give you away ’

‘I—’ He could go no further

‘Donkey’s years,’ she said ‘You’re the spit on him
I bet you am’t ever heard him talk o’ Luce Strickland,
but he knowed me all nght ’

He spoke at last, forcing himself

‘I heard him talk o’ Sam Stnckland Mihtiaman ’

‘That’s him That’s my chap ’

‘One arm I heard Dad talk o’ that a lot ’

‘That’s it ’

He had nothing to say, and she went on
‘Your Dad used to come up here, fishing and I don’t
know what Twenty or thirty years ago I known him
doss up at my chap’s old home, time th’old mother was
ahve Used to bnng in old fiddle and sing-song, great
times Ye Dad had a rare voice Yes, I knowed him
Knowed him well Old Buck ’

As she was speaking he looked up, thinking he heard a
sound m the snow outside, and she said

‘You needn’t git worried We don’t see a soul up here,

109

THE POACHER

one week’s end to another Sam’s gone mto market, and
he won’t be back yit awhile ’

She ceased speaking suddenly His face had gone a
shade whiter than she had dreamed it possible The s kin
of his hps was mdistmguishable now from the rest of his
face As the faintness overtook him his eyes stiflFened
immovably, wide open, transfixmg her, a frozen blue
colour, the whites distended She heard him groan
Before she could move or speak his body shpped forward
and out of the chair as though down a plank of ice

3

He did not realize how long he lay ill After she had
earned him upstairs that mormng, imaided, lifting him
bodily with astonishing strength, kickmg open the half-
latched door as she went, he did not remember much at
all He lay shuddenng and sweatmg under the blankets.
The hours and then the days went past him without
troubhng him He sank down mto a pit of utter weakness
And lymg there, stanng up at the far-off ceihng, very
white at first with the reflectiou of the snow, then darker as
he grew weaker and the snow thawed m the hen-yard
outside, he was concerned persistently for one thmg He
wanted his cap, the cap the constable had snatched from
him He felt that his hfe depended on the cap He
reached at last a pomt of agony and desperation m which
he saw with a kmd of visionary sight the cap suspended
from a hook m the ceihng He yelled out for it It was a
yell of dehmim and agony It was followed by shouts,
‘The cap, the cap' My cap'’ He kept up the shouting
at mtervals for the rest of the day and mto the night and
then for part of the foUowmg day On Strictland and his
wife the effect was bewildering The shout seemed mean-

IIO

THE MURDER

mgless It could have no meaning beyond the meaning
that It was a sign of delirium At times, when the desire
for the cap and the delirium at ne\er getting it rose to a
frenzy, StricLland %vould kneel on the bed and pm down
Luke’s arms, fiat, like a wrestler It subdued his body, but
not the Wild stare at the ceiling or the shout It was only
when the shout changed at last to ‘The hook, the hook^
It’s on the hook*’ that Stnctland saw that it had any
meaning at all He went downstairs, then, and came back
with a cap of his own He was a tall lanky man and some-
thing occurred to him as he came back upstairs with the
cap Back in the bedroom he stood over the bed, upright,
with the cap hanging on the iron hook of his wooden arm
He began to lower it gently In a moment Luke saw it
On the bed Mrs Stnctland, pmning down with her own
muscular hands his thin, nervous, mcredibly agitated arms,
felt the strength and the pamc go suddenly out of them
They relaxed and fluttered and loosened and then fluttered
again with a kind of nervous sigh Gradually Strickland
lowered the hook and the cap Then Mrs Strickland
stood away from the bed Then at last Luke half-raised
himself in bed and took the cap in his hands
He began gradually, from that moment, to improve
At the end of the week, three weeks after she had caught
him with the bowl of hen-mash m his hands, Mrs Stack-
land helped him to dress He went downstairs and sat in
the kitchen and stared at the fire Nothing else interested
him The next day he put on his trousers himself, lackmg
the strength to do up more than half the buttons, and
went downstairs again He felt extraordinarily weak, but
he stood for a long time looking out of the wmdow It was
February He could not believe that the snow had gone
He had a vague notion that he had been in the bedroom
for a day or two, perhaps for three or four days, no more
He stood looking out of the window until he was too weak

III

THE POACHER

to stand any longer Beyond the hen-yard and the pad-
dock with Its cart-hovel he could see a copse of birch and
oak bordenng a piece of wheat-land In the field the com
had come up thickly, m fine tangled threads of tender
green, the rows curving with the land He kept looking
from the wheat to the burches The trees were the colour
of wme, a dark red, the buds and catkins shimng more
bnghtly here and there against the buds of oak, which
were paler, a sand colour, showing up in turn against
their darker branches It was afternoon, the sky was
cloudy, with mtermittent breaks of sunshine Then he
began to see by the angle of the cold yellow hght how
long he must have been there and how near it was to
spnng

At the end of the next week he could walk across the
hen-yard On fine afternoons he put on the cap which
Stnckland had held on his iron hook and which he had
never asked him to return, and he would go into the yard
with the com-bowl to feed the hens A few snowdrops,
hke big white violet buds, had come out by the house-
wall The sun was quite warm The hens came r unning
m from the paddock, long-legged, fluttenng, to feed on the
sun-brown com he scattered down on the yard He was
stiU so weak that it was all he could do to hold the iron
com-bowls, and he would sit down sometimes on a box
by the house-wall to rest The sun was wonderful After
he had fed the hens he would still sit there, resting, spread-
mg out his hands, feehng the sun softly soaking down mto
the weak vems Then he would run his fingers through the
handful of wheat and maize grams left m the bowl, feehng
the sun on them also and on the iron

He began to feel that it was tune he was gone He knew
firom Stockland, who was an old soldier and therefore
mterested m the case, that the young soldier had been
captured But he shrank from going And though he

112

THE MURDER

knew he had nothing to fear he was still afraid The old
fear would nse up m him at times like a pam

‘I’d better be getting back,’ he said at the end of
another week

‘You ain’t fit/ Strickland said

‘I seed ye s’afternoon/ Mrs Strickland said, ‘sitting on
that box Whacked wi’ just feedin’ a few hens Y’am’t
worth a hatful o’ crabs You stop here a bit, another week,
and then see We knowed your Dad You’re welcome ’

‘Ain’t much profit in it for you,’ he said

‘Never you mind about profit ’

He had not the strength to resist their arguments or
refuse He stayed on another week It was almost the end
of February The sun was very warm sometimes m the
early afternoons, and he would sit under the cart-hovel,
in the sun, and watch Strickland bush-harrowing the
little paddock, pattemmg the grass in broad strips of hght
and shade The thrushes would sing on, wonderfully, into
the evemngs The evening light was clear and cold, the
western sky over the woods a primrose green with frost
By the house the snowdrops had multiplied and soon the
first crocuses were unfolding, bnght yellow And he began
to see, gradually, that he did not want to go back He
would sit and reason quietly about it, contrasting the open
fields and the cold spring sohtude and the sunshine with
the old life, the strange new country with the raw nver-
valley He was beginning to see for the first time in his
life that there was another way of hving than the way he
had always done

He was still weak, but he was strong enough, now, to
give Strickland a hand with the root-chopping and the
swiU-mixing and the grooming down of the horse, and he
began to get back some of the confidence he had lost m
himself He worked quietly and slowly, his strength short
The farm was small, two arable fields and the paddock,
H 113

THE POACHER

and in the evenings he would round it, skirting the boun-
danes At first he could do only half the distance. But
gradually he did more than half, then the whole distance,
going as far as the birch-copse he had seen from the win-
dows On the edge of the copse, by the brook that en-
tered Stockland’s land, the buds of pnmroses were
already pale green He could smell spnng m the wood,
in the water and m the drymg earth of the comland

One evemng, as he came by the copse, a young rabbit
broke from the cover of the dead winter-grass by the
brookside and tore across his path He flung himself
down, instantly, without thought, to catch it As he fell
fiat the rabbit bounded away across the young corn and
disappeared

He lay there for some mmutes without being able to
move The earth seemed to have struck him with stu-
pendous force He lay half-stunned, not able to reahze it
When he stood up agam he was trembhng He walked
slowly back to the house He felt shaken, broken up He
put his hands m his pockets at last and clenched them to
stop their trembhng

The next day he could not go out He had begim to let
his moustache grow, and he sat rubbing his fingers gently
backwards and forwards across the stiff short hairs, the
slow repetitive movement soothmg him a httle It was
all he could do to keep from crying at the return of his weak-
ness There was no pain It was as if his body were
empty, as if the fall against earth had knocked away all
the fortitude and strength he had got back agam

The Stocklands were worried at his inactivity, and
that evemng Stockland said

‘If you want to go back I’ll git the trap out and drive
you over to-morrow *

‘How far is it^’ he said ‘I could very like walk that
step or two ’

114

THE MURDER

* You’d look well, walking ’

‘How far is it^’

‘How far is it, missus^ Would it be sixteen^’

‘Be a good sixteen Very like seventeen,’ she said
‘Knowed the time,’ said Strickland, ‘when your Dad’d
walk that and back in a day But you ain’t him ’

‘All right,’ he said ‘You dnve me back ’

He felt a curious feeling of despondency at the thought
of departure He had not reahzed he had come so far
They were to start on the following mormng, when Strick-
land had fed the stock, but when mormng came he knew
that he did not care whether they started at all
‘Which way d’ye reckon going he said
‘I reckoned Souldrop way,’ said Strickland
‘Ain’t there no other way^ All my mother’s km spring
from there ’

‘That’s the way I reckoned ’

Luke stood for a moment, thinking

‘I ain’t going,’ he said ‘I don’t want to go ’

‘You please yourself But we’re only poor folks and we
can’t—’

‘I’ll work,’ he said ‘I want to work ’

‘I’d give you work if I could,’ said Strickland ‘But I
ain’t in a big way I can’t do it ’

‘Gettmg up at five and working till dark— you could
do with a hand ’

‘I know, but I can’t do it ’

‘Ain’t there nobody else^’

‘You ain’t fit,’ said Stockland ‘You ain’t fit to
work ’

‘I want to work,’ he said ‘I want to work Ain’t there
nobody^ ’

He stood there m earnest desperation, his whole body
wrought up against its own weakness, until Strickland
said at last

THE POACHER

‘There’s Thompson, Ehjah Thompson You couldn’t
do no less’n ask ’

‘What kind o’ man is he^’

‘Elijah^ Methodist man Local preacher ’

‘Where’s his placed’

They walked across the hen-yard to the gate by the
road and Stnckland pointed out the way to the farm
across the fields

‘You’ll see it Big stone place Damson orchard You
can’t miss it ’

Luke crossed the road and began to walk slowly away
across the fields The foothpath, raised up, went along by
a low hedgeside above a ditch An east wind was blowing
and now and then the wind caught him, making him
stagger, and m concern Stnckland stood watchmg him
stagger along until he had gone from sight

CHAPTER Til

I

Elijah Thompson had gone that morning to buy heifers
at a neighbounng farm, and the kitchen-girl told Luke to
come back again in the early evening When he walked
across the fields again in the cold clear twilight the wmd
was dropping, but the furrows in the ploughed lands were
bleached white on the eastern side, and in the cornfields
the young flounshing shoots of winter wheat lay flattened
against the earth by the cold wind as though by a roller
AU about the big stone farmhouse the damson trees, very
old and uncoloured yet by blossom-buds, stood out black
agamst the wind-cleared sky When he arrived at the
farm the hands had knocked off, the hens were cooped up
for the night, and there was a strange evenmg silence
everywhere Then when the kitchen-girl opened the door
to him she put her hand up to her mouth in half-frightened
fashion The family were at evemng prayers
He stood m the half-dark passage running from the
kitchen door to the parlour and waited for them to finish
The young girl, nervous and silent, waited at his side
They stood together without exchanging a word until the
last words of the last prayer had been spoken He could
hear at first two thin uncertainly upraised soprano voices
jomed together by the sombre harmony of Thompson’s
bass, then the solitary voice of Thompson reading the
scripture, and finally the repetition of the benedictory
prayer It reminded him of his mother and his childhood
When the sounds ceased at last the girl knocked at the
door Thompson asked for it to be opened The girl, as
though scared by the voice, gave the wooden knob a single

H7

THE POACHER

jerk, and scurried back along the passage, leaving him
there alone, slightly apprehensive and not knowing what
to do, until Thompson called out
‘Well, well, whoever it is, come m, come in ’

He went mto the room with his cap in his hands
‘WelP’ Thompson said ‘WelP’

Like his wife and daughter, Thompson was still stand-
ing, as he must have been doing during the prayers, with
the Bible still m his hands, his forefinger still marking the
page He was a large man, with a receding scalp crowned
with abundant dark red, almost calf-coloured hair, very
stiff, and large ears m the hollows of which the hair grew
thickly also He was wearing spectacles, but he wrenched
them off as Luke entered He folded them up flat and then
without thmkmg substituted them for his finger as the
book-mark, taking them out agam a moment later with a
gesture of impatience, as though remembering it were
some profanity
‘I don’t know you,’ he said

‘I come up from Strickland’s place, looking for work’
‘Work^’

Thompson laid the Bible on the table The Bible was a
black octavo, but he held it in one of his exceedingly large
red-haired hands almost as hghtly as though it were a
young bird

‘Whatwork^ What kind of work
‘Anything ’

‘Anything^’

Thompson looked at Luke’s hands Then he looked at
his face, then back to his hands, then at his feet, and finally
back to his hands agam

*Jack of all trades, I expect, and master of none ’

Luke said nothmg The two women listened and gazed
in silence as though waiting for him to go And then
Thompson, as though in finality too, reached forward and

ii8

THE MURDER

took up the Bible again and held it outstretched, in an
attitude of half-dramatic carelessness towards the girl
‘Lily, put the Book away ’

Luke reached the door and had his hand on the knob
before Thompson spoke again and before the girl had
taken the book
‘Hasty^’ he said

‘I don’t want to waste your time, that’s all ’

‘Time IS common property,’ said Thompson ‘What
work have you been doing ^ Time is a common gift from
Almighty God ’ He waited a moment ‘Not much, by
the look of you ’

‘I been knocked up ’

‘Tell me what you can do *

‘I’m a shoemaker ’

‘A shoemaker^’

It was as though he did not beheve it He spread out
his hand and drew it down his face with a gesture of pure
sarcasm, as though wiping away a smile

‘What did you think a shoemaker might do on a farm^’
‘I’m a tidy hand with a scythe ’

‘A lot of mowmg to be done in March ’

‘All right ’

Luke had taken his hand momentarily off the door knob
He put It back again

‘I didn’t ask you to go,’ said Thompson He reached
out his nght hand to the girl, chekmg his thumb agamst
his forefinger imperatively, as though askmg for the Bible
back agam ‘What is the quotation^ What is it"^ “He
that refuseth instruction—” How does it go^ “He that
refuseth— refuseth— ’ ”

No one spoke and Thompson went on, with a kind of
sarcastic impatience, exaggerated a httle, ‘ WelP A simple
quotation and not one of us can finish it Well, Mrs
Thompson^ Come ’

1 19

THE POACHER

‘It’s from the Book of Proverbs/ said the woman
‘The Book of Proverbs/ he said Thompson looked at
the woman impersonally She was not so tall as he, but
she did not look up at him when speaking or listemng
She gazed mstead straight forward, so that her gaze rested
upon his white, foldless collar She had grey pellucid eyes
which were perpetually tranfixed, vaguely, m an almost
sightless fashion Standmg there, gazmg at Thompson’s
collar with her soft expressionless eyes, she seemed to be
physically dead, or if not dead in a dream She seemed
to have gone beyond the effect of all emotion, certainly
beyond the effect of Thompson’s emotional subtleties,
into a world of msensible despondency Her very immo-
bihty and the very senseless and unchangmg tone of her
voice were full of melancholy
‘I think It IS the Book of Proverbs,’ she said Her voice,
completely unchanging m tone, was as flat as her stare at
Thompson
‘You think,’ he said

‘I believe mother is nght,’ said the girl She spoke for
the first time, her voice with some of the strength of
Thompson himself

‘You think, and you beheve,’ he said He looked at
them, separately at first and then together, with a look of
utterly impersonal contempt, his mouth drawn and
flattened hplessly mto an immovable smile ‘You thmk
and you beheve ’

‘But you don’t know' ’ he said, raising his voice ‘Turn
up the Book of Samuel The second Book ’

‘It’s Proverbs,’ said the girl

‘I am asking you to turn up the Book of Samuel ’

‘WiU you begin the quotation agam'” she said
‘I will repeat nothmg, my dear girl Turn up the Book
of Samuel ’

She resigned Her bps became almost as flat as Thomp

120

THE MURDER

son^s and almost as emotionless as her mother’s She asked
him, in a voice deliberately devoid of emotion, for chapter
and verse, and he replied m a voice that might have been
the magnified echo of it, an echo of accentuated mockery
'The second Book of Samuel The fifth chapter ’ He
spoke slowly 'Verse fifteen ’

With the same impersonal and emotionless air as before
the girl turned over the leaves of the Bible, pressing them
out at last All the time Thompson stared at her with the
same flattened humourless smile which seemed to make
his face larger than ever The woman stared m turn at
him, her eyes expressionlessly fixed on the point where his
Adam’s apple fitted into the angle of his collar Then
when the girl had found the place Thompson spoke
'Read it,’ he said The girl did not open her mouth
'Read it,’ said Thompson He looked at Luke 'I hope
you are listening^’ he said 'It is for your good ’

When he had finished speaking the girl’s hps relaxed
She began to read out 'Ibhar also,’ she read, 'and
Elishua, and—’

'And John the Apostle, you will tell me next ’

She looked at him quietly for a moment before looking
back at the book
'It was the wrong verse ’

'Most curious ’

He waited

'I am waiting,’ he said

'And Elishama,’ she was reading the next verse now,
'and Ehada— ’

He reached out his hand coldly and unexcitedly, and
took the Bible from her
'Elishama,’ he repeated, 'and Ehada ’

Even the face of the woman underwent a faint change
at the bitterness of that contempt The girl looked at
Luke He felt a violent desire, as he had done with the

I2I

THE POACHER

constables, to smash Thompson m the face, but he was
conscious of a curious sickness and impotence also, and he
said nothing And finally Thompson began to read
‘'He that refuseth mstruction— ’ he read with slow
gravity, with a meticulous and heavy accent, not looking
at the Book— ^ he that refuseth instruction shall be num-
bered among the foolish, and his children thereafter ’

The girl looked at him all the time with extreme pene-
tration She was as tall as her mother, but she looked up
at Thompson Her dark brown dress was fastened close
up under her neck and she held back her head as though
the dress restricted and pamed her throat It gave her a
look of extreme pride, her eyes all the time very clear and
dispassionately light

She was still looking at Thompson when he finished
reading and when he leaned forward to replace the Bible,
closed, upon the table, but he did not look at her in return
He was looking at Luke mstead 'There is something
in that Book to fit every occasion,' he said 'And every
man, woman and child, too, if it comes to that But you
know that already ’

'I ain’t much of a Bible-reader *

'Where do you come from^’

'Nenweald ’

Thompson smiled 'Nenweald— all hair and teeth, isn’t
thatit^ A rough lot’

Luke did not speak He could feel the girl looking at
him He felt at the same time a desire to smash Thompson
m the face again

Unexpectedly Thompson spoke once more
'If I don’t find you work I suppose the devil will You
had better come along m the morning ’

Luke stood for a moment looking from Thompson to
the girl and then firom the girl to the woman, still gazing
expressionlessly m front of her But no one spoke, and

122

THE MURDER

finally he said * Thanks’ and opened the door As he
reached the passage outside Thompson called after him
‘Here a moment You could do worse than take this
with you ’ He had the Bible in his hands
‘I ain’t much of a reader ’

Thompson stretched out his hand
‘Learn/ he said

Luke took the Bible and went along the passage and let
himself out into the yard It was dark outside except in
the extreme west, where the sky was still a pale lemon-
colour, clear and cold The stars were shining, and as he
went across the orchard, through the damson trees, he
looked back The blinds m the farmhouse had not been
drawn, and he could see Thompson walking up and down
in the lamplight, a dominating figure, his big hand raised
and lowered as though m explanation of something, and
the two women still standing there.

123

CHAPTER IV

I

He worked at Valley Farm, Thompson’s place, as a
labourer all that spring He was seventeen miles from
Nenweald, it seemed as though he were m another world
He lodged with the Stricklands Every morning at four
he got up by candlelight in order to be in the farm kitchen
by half-past and drink the beer and eat the bread and
cheese that the kitchen-girl had set out on the table for
himself and his sixteen fellow hands The farm was very
large and of the six hundred acres more than half were
arable that year, the meadow-lands lying along the nver
at the feet of the gentle slopes on which the house stood
He was at muck-cart during March and the early weeks of
Apnl, and the work, at first, almost finished him He was
so weak that in the evenings, sometimes, he could not
stand upright During the day the muck, by a sort of
suction, dragged away the strength, down through his
arms and hands and even down to his finger-tips He was
glad to lean on the wheels of the carts, surreptitiously, to
rest He had no reserves of strength and endurance And
he was so blmdly weary that, going home across the fields
at the end of the day, he did not see the first-opened prim-
roses on the copse-edge, and later the dark green spikes of
the first bluebells among them It was not until the end of
April, when the weather was warmer and he had begun
to get back his strength, that he troubled to think about
the spnng He saw it emotionlessly even then He became
fiilly aware of it only when the damson trees came into
blossom at last, m the green orchard He first saw the
trees, consciously, one Sunday morning, as he went back

124

rHE MURDER

home after helping with the cows The black trees had
changed by a miracle to white They stood transfigured,
the blossom a miracle of whiteness The half-transparent
petals were so hght that there was hardly a shadow on
the grass The cowslips had come out too, nch yellow m
the white-petalled orchard, and he could see the bees
working in them and in the damson trees Separately, and
then together, he could smell the scents of cowslips and
grass and damson blossom It was qmet except for the
sound the bees made And he stood listening to them
and watching them and looking at the white blossom and
breathing the scent of it all until he could stand no longer
From somewhere about that time he began to come
back to life He began to like the work and the farm and
to be conscious of liking it The May weather was dry
that year and Thompson’s com dark and thick As he
took his place m the hoemg-rows Luke felt a pride m the
corn, as though it had been his own Towards the end of
May, before the com was too high, the docks had to be
pulled The men worked with hooked sticks of ash or
hazel, using the hooks to lever under the forks of the dock-
roots The docks had to be uprooted unbroken, to the last
tip of hair-root And periodically Thompson came mto
the field m order to watch and see that that was done
He would walk up and down the rows behind the men,
watchmg but not speaking, like a guard in charge of a
working party of prisoners The men were silent too,
pulling up the docks and throwing them aside, mto the
osier corn-skips, without a murmur Thompson walked
only a yard or two behind the men, so that eventually,
when a man broke off a dock too short, he would be near
enough to kick him in the back
One afternoon Luke broke a dock short, leaving the root
half m the earth, and Thompson, standing just behmd,
kicked him Luke fell heavily on his knees and hands

125

THE POACHER

among the com The blow from Thompson's foot seemed
ternfic and for a moment or two he could not get up
While he lay there Thompson lacked him again
'Get up/ he said, 'can't you*'

Luke got up He was dazed and could not see Thomp-
son clearly

' Get It out clean/ said Thompson
Luke looked round for his stick
'Get it out/ Thompson repeated
The stick lay a yard or two up the rows and as Luke
bent forward to pick it up Thompson aimed another kick
at him

'Now get it up/ he said

Luke half-knelt among the com and began to uproot
the dock again, his back turned away from Thompson
He felt cunously weak, submissive The kick had knocked
the spirit out of him He worked at the dock mechanically,
conscious of nothmg but the pain in his buttocks and his
fear of Thompson standing over him He scratched the
dry earth with his hands, like a dog, m order to find where
the root had broken off, yellow, under the surface All
the time Thompson stood over him, saying nothing It
was only when the thm spear of dock-root had been pulled
out that Thompson spoke again
'Now you know,' he said
Luke said nothmg
'Don’t you^ Answer me '

'Yes'

'Then take care you don't forget ’

Thompson walked away up the wheat-rows, and then
hesitated and then came back
‘See me when you leave off'

In the evenmg, when he went to the house, Luke could
still feel the ache at the foot of his spine where Thompson
had kicked him He stood m the kitchen while the girl

126

lUL MljRDER

told Thompson he was there Presently when the girl
came back Thompson was with her, but the girl disap-
peared as soon as she opened the door Thompson looked
at Luke and spoke

‘I want to give you a chance/ he said
Luke said nothing, he felt instinctively that Thompson
expected him to say nothing
‘What were you,’ Thompson went on, ‘before you came
here^’

‘I told you A shoemaker ’

‘A shoemaker ’

It was the old habit of contemptuous repetition and
Thompson paused to allow the effect of it to pass before
he spoke again

‘You can mend boots he said
‘Yes’

‘Any boots
‘Yes’

Thompson looked at his own feet ‘These boots he
said The boots were black, of hard kip-leather that would
not shine, and the soles were double thickness, the caps
broad and powerful
‘Yes,’ Luke said

‘They’re my preaching boots,’ said Thompson
‘They’re heavy ’

‘They need to be heavy,’ said Thompson, ‘since I
walk twenty miles m them every Sunday Twenty miles
on Sunday and ten every Tuesday They need to be
heavy ’

Suddenly Thompson sat down m a chair and began to
take off the boots As he pulled them off and set them on
the brick floor they seemed larger than ever ‘I want to
give you a chance,’ he said He picked up the boots
together in one hand ‘You say you can mend them^’
‘Yes ’

THE POACHER

‘Don’t say you can if you can’t Look at them Take a
good look at them ’

Luke picked up the boots They were hot and moist
mside from the sweat of Thompson’s feet and they were
a dead weight m his hands He turned them over and
looked at them The soles were whitish and worn already
by the summer roads, and the heels were rounded down
by the repeated force of Thompson’s step
Luke put the boots down on the kitchen floor again
‘I could mend them/ he said
‘Then mend them ’

‘When^’ said Luke

‘I want them before Sunday *

T got no tools/ Luke said

‘That’s nothing to do with me/ said Thompson ‘Get
some ’

He was out of the room before Luke could speak again,
calling ‘Lily, Lily, where are you^ Where are my
slippers^’ as he strode softly down the passage m his
stockinged feet

2

Luke borrowed fifteen shillings, all Strickland could
spare him, and walked the seven miles mto Bedford on the
following evening and bought the tools he knew he would
need It was twihght before he was back at Strickland’s
agam Then he sat m the kitchen, handicapped by having
no bench, and worked with the shoe-last between his knees,
by candlehght, stnppmg off the old soles and the worn
heeUifts, studding the new with the same kind of square-
headed pins that Thompson had worn down to mere
shavmgs of silver m the old It was midnight before he
had finished In the mommg he was at the house before
SIX o’clock Thompson himself met him at the door

128

THE MURDER

Thompson looked at the boots and took them without a
wordj only turning them over m his hand He was already
dressed for preaching His black cloth suit heightened the
fiery colour of tus hair Looking at the boots he murmured
with a kind of savage rumination about something before
slamming the door An hour later, when Luke saw him
striding down the road by Stockland’s, he had a large
Bible in one hand and an ash-stick m the other
In the afternoon, as Luke was coming across the cow-
yard with the first milk-buckets, Lily Thompson called
him to the house

‘My shoes want mending,’ she said
Standing with the milk-buckets in his hands, he said
nothing, he did not know what to say
‘I saw the boots you mended for father,’ she went on
He spoke abruptly with his old tone of laconic irony
T dare say,’ he said
‘He says you’re to mend them *

‘All nght, if he says so ’

‘He did say so ’

‘All nght ’

He looked instantly down at her boots They were
black and rather slender-toed, with high uppers that
buttoned up He could see that they were quite elegant,
the calf leather soft and smooth and fitting rather tighly
to her feet

‘You am’t very hard on ’'em/ he said.

‘They want mendmg/ she said
‘Let’s look Holdup*

‘I’ll take them off if you like,’ she said
‘All right Take It off’

She sat down on the kitchen steps and began to xm-
button her boot Waitmg, he set down the imlk-buckets,
and finally, when she gave him the boot, he turned it over
and over m his hancL critically The sole of the boot was
I 129

THE POACHER

sound, and along the edge of it the leather was still a light
corn-colour as though she had hardly worn the boots
‘They’re good/ he said

‘But they want mending/ she said ‘Don’t they^’

He gave the boot back to her, sole uppermost She
turned it over quickly and put it on and began to button
It up again

‘You’ll go a tidy way m ’em yet ’ he said
‘They hurt me/ she said
‘I dare say ’

He waited till she had buttoned up the boot before he
picked up the milk-buckets and walked away She called
after him as he walked across the yard and he turned and
promised to mend the boots
In the evening she called at the Stricklands’ and asked
for him He had gone mto her father’s meadows to fish
for an hour, but the Stricklands told her where to find
him, and she walked across the meadows of mown hay to
where he was worm-fishmg under a hne of alders She
had the boots tied up m brown paper He did not hear
her commg and he was on his feet, ready to run, before he
knew who it was, and she gave an exclamation of surpnse
as though she had not seen him either In a moment he
sat down on the nver bank agam and she sat down too,
saying she had brought the boots He said nothing In
the qmetness over the nver there was hardly a soxmd
except the motion of the grasshoppers in the uncut fiinge
of grass Out m the stream his cork float, home-made,
with Its white hen’s feather, was motionless He was really
not fishing, only passmg the tune and trying to feel the
stream Then as he sat there, silent, watching the nver,
she said for the second time that she had brought the
boots

Not knowmg what to say, he kept silent It was almost
a year smce he had fished He had no rod and was using

THE MURDER

a i\i]Iow-branch5 with the line tied to the end, as he had
done when a boy The stream was placid, deep and so
slow that the float hardly moved, and when she asked if
he had caught anything he shook his head
A moment later his float jerked and sank He struck,
amused to see the htde roach that came up frenziedly
struggling on a hook He brought the roach to the bank
and took the hook from its mouth The fish slipped from
his hand and began to slap about on the bank before he
could catch it agam

Lily Thompson began to laugh as the roach danced on
the bank and he stared m astonishment at the sudden
sound of her voice It was very nch and full of pleasure
He saw that she was standing up and that she was half-
dancing too with the pleasure that the dancing roach gave
her Every time the roach leaped and squirmed her voice
took on fresh tones of delight ‘DonH touch it, don^t touch
It,’ she kept saying ^ Don’t touch it ^ ’ The roach leapt and
squirmed vainly in the grass and Lily drank in eagerly
every movement of its straggles His hand closed over it
at last, Its little dark mouth panting open and shut in
rapid gasps ‘You’re not to throw it back*’ she said
‘You’re not to ’

‘Why^’hesaid ‘Whynot^’

‘I want to see it, I want to see it*’

He threw the roach down in the grass and after it had
struggled for a moment or two she seized it m her hands,
as he had done, so that its mouth gasped open and shut
m rapid agony between her thumb and forefinger He
kept telling her to throw the roach mto the water again,
but by the time she had ceased laughing at its sufiFering
the roach was dead

After that he untied his hne and threw the wiUow-rod
mto the grass and they walked back up the hay-meadows
again Lily still carried her shoes The weather was very

THE POACHER

dry and the hay, lying still unturned m the long curved
swathes where the scythers had left it, was almost white
m the evening sunshine They walked slowly across the
swathes, hardly speaking Then, coming up the last
meadow by the hedgeside, they saw Thompson walking
along the road above them They could see nothing but
his black square hat above the hedgerow and they watched
It until It had disappeared
*He’s late coming back,’ Luke said
^No This IS his time Somewhere about eight o’clock *
He wanted to know how far he walked each Sunday,
and she said

‘Twenty miles Perhaps more ’

‘Just to preach^ Why don’t he take the trap^’

‘He says it’s his duty to walk on the feet God gave him
When I was a child I went with him ’

She talked m a cunously flat voice, unamazed, and he
said

‘Why don’t you go with him now^’

‘I’m twenty-two,’ she said ‘I can do what I like ’
‘Ah»’

‘Almost He’s not my father at all ’

She spoke all the time m the same flat, cold voice, quite
impersonally, as though she despised Thompson Fmally
she made a sound of impatience, a slight ‘ Oh * ’ as though
she did not want to talk of him at all
Out of the meadow, m the road, by Stnckland’s place,
he left her The white pinks were m bloom in Strickland’s
garden, the evening air heavily sweet with their fragrance,
and as he stood breathing it m he suddenly wondered why
she had not given him the boots after all

CHAPTER V

I

After that, quite suddenly and for no reason, he began to
like her She seemed nearly always to be about the farm-
yard whenever he walked across with the pig-buckets or
a load of straw, and he began to look forward to seeing
her, in the white big-sleeved dress that she wore, and then
to be disappointed when she was not there He hardly
ever spoke to her during the daytime But seeing him, she
would stand still and smile, or when she was too far away
she would lift her hand in a half-secret gesture of friend-
liness Unlike the women on the farms he had always
known she and Mrs Thompson did no work Mrs
Thompson, very frail and subdued, would sit sewing under
the damson trees in the fine summer mornings, and in the
afternoon Lily would jom her If he were working on that
side of the house he could see the two women as they sat
there, two white figures under the dark green trees
motionless except for the infinitely brief movements of their
hands as they sewed or the slow white flutter of the pages
if Lily were readmg They were symbols of a genteel and
leisurely life he had hardly beheved could exist And
after a time he began to see why Lilyas boots were scarcely
worn Except for the walk into the orchard Mrs Thomp-
son scarcely walked at all Eveiy*^ journey made beyond
the white gates that opened on to the road at the end of
the house-drive was made either m the trap, if Thompson
were with her, or m the buggy if she and Lily went alone
And they were the only excursions he could see that either
she or Lily made At first they seemed to be boimd to the
house Then he saw that they were bound not so much

133

THE POACHER

to the house as to Thompson As she sat m the orchard
Mrs Thompson would keep her eyes half-averted towards
the fields, as though consciously or unconsciously watchmg
for Thompson to come Whenever he did come she would
drop her sewmg and sometimes rise to her feet, if she did
not get up she would sit with her hands on the chair-arms,
in suspense, only relaxmg if by some chance Thompson
went out of sight again She sat in a kind of subservient
terror Lily did nothing She never rose when Thompson
appeared, never even looked up from her book She sat in
unspoken contempt, just as her mother sat m unspoken
fear and obedience She read a great deal large volmnes,
with pink marbled edges, which at some time Thompson
had had boimd up m plam calf, imiformly, so that it
seemed as though she were for ever readmg the same book
and never commg to the end

It was a book which made her go to the Stricklands’ one
evenmg, asking for Luke She earned the book as she had
done her shoes, wrapped m brown paper When she un-
wrapped it he saw that the book was spht down the spine
She had thrown it at the cat He wanted to know why
She said, ‘ I wanted to, that’s all I just wanted to * He
stood fingermg the smooth calf, with pleasure, as she asked
him to repair it The book was Scott’s Bride of Lammer-
moor and before he could speak agam she asked him if he
had read it

T only read one book in my life,’ he said ‘That was
Martyrs Fox’s Martyrs ’

‘ I love that,’ she said ‘ Oh ' I love that But you should
read Scott He’s romantic Kenilworth— you^d like that
I’ve read all Scott— aU the tales and the poems ’

It was beyond him, he tned to say once that he would
glue the tom calf, but she took no notice, gomg on to tell
him of what she had read and not read and what she
longed to read

134

THE MURDER

‘Why don’t you read^’ she said
‘Never had time ’

‘But why ^ Why^’

‘I had summat else to do ’

He was embarrassed and she revelled in his embarrass-
ment, catechizing him contmually until he told her at last
‘I was too busy doing what I was told ’

‘And what was that^’

He did not answer They were standmg at the gate of
Strickland’s httle farmyard, and suddenly, as she spoke, it
all came back to him as he had first seen it The hen-yard
under the snow, the frightened hens, the woman with the
steaming hen-mash, her cries, his own fear It was the
persistence of his own fear which made him say
‘I’ll tell you some time ’

But she was not satisfied, and she kept up her persistent
questioning until he was half-desperate, the poaching
days, the murder and the death of his father all coming
back to him again and again And then, as his despera-
tion reached its height and he was ready and even anxious,
for the pure relief of it, to tell her everything, her voice
lost Its insistent mtensity, she gave him a bnef smile of
assurance and she seemed to give it up
‘I’ll tell you some time,’ he said

And strangely, she seemed content with that, givmg him
a brief smile of reassurance, as though she were half-sony
and as though she half-imderstood
Soon afterwards Thompson asked him if he could make
him a pair of boots ‘If you make them well I might get
you to make a pair for Mrs Thompson, and then one for
Lily’

‘I shall have to measure you, and get lasts ’

‘Very weU Get the lasts You can drive into market
with me to-morrow ’

He fimshed the boots for Thompson by the en,d of the

135

THE POACHER

next week They were of the same funereal, unshinmg
black kip-leather as the preaching boots and Thompson
took them and turned them over and over in his hands
without comment Luke stood waiting and finally Thomp-
son said

'How much, then, am I in your debt^’

'A pound and sixpence, counting the lasts ’

'The lasts’’ Thompson said 'What are the lasts to do
with me^’

'I had to get them ’

'You had to get them ’ Thompson said He paused
'Do they belong to me or to you^’

'They’re mine ’

'They’re yours and yet you want to charge me for them ’
'It’s expenses ’

'If you pay for the lasts, they’re yours,’ said Thompson
slowly 'If I pay for them, it’s expenses ’

'I don’t reckon you twig it, quite It’s understood ’
'Understood^ I don’t understand What do the lasts
cost you^ ’

'Four-and-six ’

Thompson took out his purse, a silver-ringed bag of soft
leather, and counted out sixteen shillings and laid the
money on the table of the room where he did his accounts
Luke did not pick the money up and Thompson said
'Isn’t that right

Luke did not answer and Thompson began very slowly,
shiUing by shilling, to pick up the money and put it back
into his purse again

'We must come to a different arrangement, then, if it
isn’t nght ’

'I said a poimd and sixpence ’

'We must come to a different arrangement ’

Standmg ngid, angry more even with himself than with
Thompson, Luke hardly hstened as Thompson went on

136

THE MURDER

to tell him how, m future, he would make the boots and
mend them m Thompson's time and not his own 'What-
ever tools you want, then, I will buy You can fill m your
time with the harness ' He wanted to say somethmg about
the gross injustice of Thompson’s behaviour, but Thomp-
son stood looking at him with an expression of fixed con-
tempt, his lips pursed into a flat half-smile, and finally
Luke picked up his cap and went out of the room without
a word

From that day he began to spend his time making and
mendmg shoes for the Thompson family and repairing
the harness and saddlery, he worked at a bench which
Thompson allowed him to put up m an old wash-house
behmd the stables, out of sight of the house and the orchard
Thompson wore out his boots qmckly, more than thirty
horses were at work on the farm, and there was always
work for him to do Gradually the new clean wood of the
bench became leather-stained and littered with leather-
skivmgs and tacks and pms and nvets of steel and brass,
and the many files and hammers and awls and pmcers of
his craft, and the place full of the acrid odours of new
leather and the stmk of the hot wax-pot And gradually
also, as the first sense of restlessness subdued itself, he hked
working there He hked the feehng of solitude and
seremty that came of being alone There was a httle win-
dow in the place He could look over the fields, across the
valley, as he had done with his father at Nenweald And
once, as he sat there thmking of his father, he picked up a
piece of wire from the bench and twisted it half-consciously
into a circle and then mto a snare He put the wire down
on the bench without thinkmg what he had done and it
lay there for a week without his noticmg it agam One day
when Lily came in to brmg a pair of her boots the snare was
still lying on the bench She saw it and picked it up and
ran the noose together, until it almost closed He took it

137

THE POACHER

away from her and put it down on the bench She took
It up again She wanted to know what it was He said
‘A noose ^ She looked as if she did not understand He
said ^A snare, if you like, a trap ’ She kept running the
noose in and out, over her fingers ‘What for^’ she asked
He said ‘For rats I got rats all under this bench ’ After
that she scarcely spoke about the snare again and he forgot
It as he worked and talked with her It was only when she
was outside the door that it occurred to him that she still
had the snare in her hand

He called her back, then, and dragged her inside the
workshop and took the snare away from her before she
had time to speak He was trembhng with sudden agita-
tion She stared at him with a kind of thrilled astonish-
ment as he threw the snare under the bench
‘Whafs the matter^’ she said
‘It’s a rabbit snare I thought you twigged that ’
‘What if it is^’

‘D’ye want to get me hung^^ he said ‘I could get
gaoled for even making that ’

She stood listening with a cunous eagerness, with a
strange look of half-scared delight on her face, as though
his words thrilled and frightened her And, as he clenched
the wire in his hands, screwing it up to a meamngless knot,
he saw the look on her face, misinterpreting it as a horror
of himself

He said at once ‘It’s all nght I didn’t want Thomp-
son— I didn’t want your father to know, that’s all ’ He
threw the wire under the bench ‘If he knew about that
wire he’d smash me ’

‘Smash you^’

‘Y’ understand, don’t you^ It’s agm the law ’

‘Then why did you make it^’

‘It was an accident I didn’t know I was making it ’
She paused before speaking agam A strange expression

THE MURDER

had come over her face, a look of vivid contempt, and
when she spoke she was very excited
‘As if I would have told him Him'’

Before he had time to speak she went on, the contempt
if anything mcreasmg, her face almost white m its anger
‘And don’t call him my father' He isn’t my father ’

He tried to murmur something apologetic, m explana-
tion, but she had gone before he could recover himself
from his profound surpnse It was not until afterwards
that he discovered that he was trembhng too

8

They began to be drawn together, from about that time,
by a common hatred of Thompson It became so that
whenever he expected to see her he found himself searchmg
his imnd for some mcident, even a sentence or a word,
expressive of Thompson’s meanness or hypocnsy It was
almost harvest, and Thompson had still not paid him for
the shoes he had made him m the early summer They
talked of it for days, the sum of Thompson’s ingratitude
accumulating, as it were, an mterest of bitterness whenever
they spoke of it They gamed a strange pleasure from that
secret and combmed hatred It even became so that he
did not want Thompson to pay him for the shoes so that
the pleasure of their mutual emotion might still go on
And as though she saw that too she smd ‘I wouldn’t take
the money now, if he were to offer it ’ He said he wouldn’t
be seen dead with the money Not if Thompson went
down on his bended knees He told her also of the day
Thompson had kicked him m the field She m return
would tell him of happenmgs m the house, httle mcidcnts
of persecution as regular and habitual with him as the
morning or evemng prayers, of how Thompson would

139

THE POACHER

persecute her indirectly, through Mrs Thompson, her own
mother They talked of the first mght Luke had come mto
the house, and she told him of what he did not know, but
had half-suspected, of how Thompson, imstaken m the
chapter and verse of his text, had made up the words

They went on firom mutual hatred of Thompson to a
kmd of reticent, unspoken anxiety for each other, and
firom that mto confidences and for some time an unspoken
admiration and tenderness He told her a good deal about
his life, about the running and the poaching, the hand-to-
mouth way he had always hved, his aunt and the reading,
the death of his father, and at last, sure of her confidence,
about the murder and all the folly of his escape m the snow
He felt strangely reheved and at rest when he had told
her everythmg It was a refreshing sensation His fears
and even the shame he still felt at his own foolishness
seemed nothing Having told her everything, he could
not think why he had ever been afraid or foolish or
ashamed

One day, m the workshop, as they were bendmg over
the bench lookmg for a needle he had dropped among his
tacks and pins, he put his arm round her shoulder and let
his hand run across her neck before he began kissmg her
It let loose in her a flood of imexpected passion He felt
her trembhng As she upnghted herself he shpped his
hands down from her shoulders to take her by the waist,
his hands runnmg down over her tightened breasts half-
acadentally She seemed to come to life at once He kissed
her agam Tremblmg violently, she held herself very close
to him, her body hardened, m an effort to qmeten herself
She did not speak except to ask him to kiss her agam
When he had done that she seemed to be trembhng more
violently than ever He could not hold her stiH

After that they gave up meeting m the workshop It
was not enough for her to be m love, the love must also

140

THE MURDER

be romantic So they began to meet in a wood that
bounded the Thompson land on the south side And when
they met there, after twilight, after he had finished the
overtime he was working in the harvest field, the meeting
was everything to her by its secrecy Her emotions were
heightened by an everlasting fear of discovery

It filled all their time together with a kind of ecstatic
anxiety Sometimes he could not get to the wood until
ten at night But however late he was she would be there
waiting She whipped up her expectancy at his coming
and her fear that he was not coming mto a sort of ecstatic
fever When he finally came, already tired out by the
harvest-field, she exhausted him utterly by the intensity of
her talking He never fully understood it aU He did not
know what to think of her He had never heard anyone
talk as she talked At first it was like a romantic gibberish
It was something quite remote from his own shifty though
prosaic hfe It was not enough for her that he should
make love to her simply It had to be done romantically,
strangely, as though he were a character out of one of her
impossible novels ‘Kiss me, kiss me I shall swoon Kuss
me ’ The silliness of her dreary voice, so unhke the rather
correct, chpped speech of her normal life, at first tortured
him Gradually he got used to it, gave himself up to it,
and then did not think of it He knew at last what she
wanted And it was only when she began to love him
physically, giving herself night after night in the wood
with an ease that astounded him, that she ceased to
trouble about loving him romantically She no longer
spoke the strange, silly language which had so bewildered
him She scarcely spoke at all She loved him m an
almost complete silence of elation He understood her
then

If there was any taUang at all, then, it was he who did
It Lily was pretty in a pale, rather hard way, her grey

141

THE POACHER

eyes cold and light, like water He thought she was very
lovely, and she seemed to him to grow more lovely as the
days went past and his tenderness increased
‘Ah, ye're my treasure/ he would say ‘Ain’t you^
Ye’re my treasure^’

‘You know best about that ’

‘Yes, ye’are Ye’re my treasure Ye’re my treasure ’

It was not until after harvest, when the stubbles were
empty, cleaned even of their gleammgs xmder the softly
remote September skies, that there was another change in
her She was almost sure by then that she was going to
have a child

3

To his astonishment she was not troubled It was almost
as if she had set out, dehberately, to have the child, know-
ing that if she succeeded there could only be one solution
to it all— to escape from the farm He knew that that had
been her ambition for a long time and it did not surpnse
him when, at the beginmng of October, she told him that
she was certain of the child and that they must get away
She seemed eager to go away at once, excitedly eager, half
as though It were not only imperative but a httle romantic
to be running away with him in secret He, m turn, know-
mg that it was the only possible thing, was troubled only
by where they should go

‘We’ll go back to where you came from,’ she said

‘Nenweald*’

‘Can you think of anywhere else^’ she said

She was imperative, and it was she who made the plans
for their going, just as she had made the plans for meetmg
in the wood What she said was final, unanswerable He
could do nothmg She had one unassailable answer to
whatever he might think or say

142

THE MURDER

‘Can you think what would happen if we stayed here^'^
Finally, towards the middle of October, they went It
was very simple It was easy to arrange one afternoon that
Lily should go into Bedford on a shoppmg errand and
almost as easy to arrange that he should drive and that
they should not come back again It all passed oflF simply
and easily, without any unusual happening except a very
bnef one which he never forgot, and this was when Ldy,
asking him to stop the trap before they had gone half a
mile, turned in her seat and slowly and with a kind of
vicious premeditation, spat in the direction of the farm
They arrived in Nenweald late in the afternoon The
sight of the familiar spire, the houses, the Square with the
flourishing chestnut trees planted to commemorate the
accession of the Queen, filled him with a strange sense of
foreboding and pleasure He knew that there was only
one thing for him to do and only one person for him to see
He sat with his aunt for almost an hour For once she
scarcely spoke It was only when he had said all he had
to say that she came out of her silence
‘It’s a good job,’ she said then, Tt’s nothing worse I
thought you’d been jabey enough to go off for a soldier ’
And at last, ‘Where’s the girP’

‘ Outside ’

‘Fetch her m then ’

When he went out of the house to find Lily it was
almost dark, and the wind, blowing in a north-easterly
direction from over the river, was brmgmg with it bnef
gusts of rain that surprised him with their bitterness
It was only then that he realized, for the first time, that
It was almost winter

H3

PART ITT

IHE LAND

K

CHAPTER I

I

T HEY were married, his aunt lent him twenty pounds,
and in the early wmter of that year, at her suggestion, he
rented a piece of land on the eastern outskirts of the town
from a Nenweald baker He began almost at once to
break it up, at first by hand, and then with a light one-
horse plough, hiring the plough from a blacksmith and
the horse from the baker There was no house on the land
He and Ldy lived m a new red-brick house in one of the
rows that were springmg up on the edges of Nenweald
Machinery was beginning to come m, factories hke tall
brick and slate boxes, with thick glass windows, were
springing up among the houses, and the town was ex-
panding Everywhere there was talk of development, the
railway was coming, great changes, people declared, were
going to happen m the order of things Already it was
becoming apparent in the wage disputes, the black-
aproned shoemakers arguing at the factory comers in the
dinner-hours, the hammer and whine of new machmery,
strikes, pohticians spouting on the Square in the evenmgs,
echoing the thimder of Bradlaugh Rehgion was coming
m with the machines, httle chapels of cormgated iron and
raw brick were sprmgmg up, indistinguishable at a
distance from the factories and the tannmg-sheds, and
with It all the speculator in property, the temperance re-
former, and the nse of a new class, the working-class, as
distmct from the labourers and the old shoemakers workmg
by hand, mdependently

But workmg on his piece of land, alone, Luke scarcely
noticed it In the shortemng wmter days he worked all

147

tHfi POACHER

day, from dark to dark, eatmg his midday meals in the
ditch, under the hedge He had no time to thmk of any
outside life At times, if the wind sat right, he could hear
the sound of the river-digger, the great Amencan steam
implement cutting the course for the railway He would
lean on his spade or on the plough-handles and listen to it
An incredible implement, moving more earth m one
movement than he himself could move m a day He
listened to it vaguely, it meant nothing to him Similarly
the hfe of the past began to recede and mean nothing, as
havmg no part m the breaking up of his new soil He
ceased even to trouble, as he had troubled at first, about
Thompson and the possibility of his pursmt and pro-
ceedings Life was translated mto terms of soil, the
tummg-over of soil, the breaking-up of it, the sight of it.
Its wet, wintry smell He tasted soil in his bread, it began
to be so deeply ditched in his hands that he could never
wash It out

His field was almost square, with a northward slope,
and m all about five acres At the end of two months he
had broken up a strip about twenty yards wide and going
the full length of it On a November afternoon he sowed
his first wheat on it, broadcast Snow fell soon afterwards
When it had vanished he could see the first shoots of his
wheat, miraculously green on the snow-levelled land It
seemed wonderful The next day he urged Lily to walk
up to the field and look at it She was m her fourth month
She was wearing tight stays and the walk exhausted her
When she arrived at the field she wanted to do nothmg
but sit down and rest She had not the strength to look at
the wheat There was nowhere for her to sit except the
groimd So he spread out a sack for her, and then his
jacket over the sack

Tfs time you had a hut or a hovel or something, where
you could shelter/ she said

148

THE LAND

So m the new year he began to put up the first buildings,
i wooden hut for his tools and a sty for his jfirst pig The
lut was very small, but he built it under the shelter of the
ugh hawthorn hedge, with a little window facing south,
ind It seemed like a sanctuary after the wintry bitterness
>f the bare land

^You could come up there, fine afternoons,' he said to
aly, ®and keep me company '

*I don^’t want to come '

He thought she seemed wretched He put it down to
he child

‘You're all right, am’t you^' he said

‘I'm all right '

‘You got to get out more ’

‘I don't want to go out Where could I go if I went

)Ut^'

‘You could go and see my mother '

‘Your mother^'

It was as though, unconsciously, she had picked up
hat trick of ironical repetition from Thompson He said
lothing He knew that, except for one smgle occasion
Lilly had never been to see his mother, and that ever since,
is though in retaliation, neither his mother nor his sisters
lad called on him He had not time to consider the in-
ricacies of feminine jealousy But vaguely, mutely, he was
lurt and could not forget it all

Nevertheless all that winter he cherished a constant and
ender adoration for her He knew, vaguely, without ever
inalysing himself very deeply, that he himself had changed,
le had grown quieter The death of his father, the murder,
he brief period of subjection to Thompson had chastened
um Looking back, he could regard with nothing but
istonishment the old life, the night after night poachmg,
he risks and the fears He could hardly believe he had
:aken part in it He was so concerned now with the land,

149

THE POACHER

with Lily and with the coming of the child that he could
not believe he had ever been concerned with other
things

Towards the end of the wmter, when the days began to
lengthen, he found himself lookmg ahead He had by that
time broken up a little more than half the field It was
ungracious land, a heavyish clay In the sprmg wmds the
earth dried out into harsh clots which, by great labour, he
broke down with a clot-hoe Looking ahead, he laid his
plans for the field, how, that summer, he would have,
besides his wheat, a strip of oats and another of barley,
and then a patch of potatoes, then some swedes and some
cabbages, leavmg a strip of grass the whole length of the
field Then, if things turned out well, he could graze a
horse or a cow He had no illusions as to how far he
might go or how much he might do His strength and his
ambitions were both limitless His strength came back
to him fully with the sun, so that, as the light of the year
mcreased, his own energy mcreased too He did nothing
but work For a penod, durmg the coincident planting of
potatoes and barley, he did not go mto the streets of Nen-
weald except once He went then to get his hair cut, and,
worn out, feU asleep m the barber’s chair At night, in
his sleep, he re-enacted all he had done during the day,
opening endless trenches in the spnng earth m order to
plant in them everlasting hnes of potatoes Working smgle-
handed, he found himself workmg unceasingly agamst
time He got up at daybreak, came downstairs m his shirt,
hghted the fire, went back to dress, and then, coming
down agam without wakmg Lily, ate his breakfast stand-
mg up Durmg the night he would wake recurrently,
afraid that he would oversleep himself Then he took
enough bread and bacon mto the field with him for the
day On fine days he sat under the hedge to eat But if it
were wet or cold he would sit m the tool-hut, staring at

150

THE LMSID

the field through the already cob-webbed window, making
fresh plans and criticizing, half-unconsciously, those he
had already made There were many things that he
wanted a horse and cart, a plough, a harrow, a cow,
some hens, an infinite catalogue of live and dead stock A
horse would mean a stable, the hens a fowlhouse And he
wondered sometimes which he should get first, the stable
or the horse, the hens or the house, argmng for one side
and then another until he saved himself firom utter
desperation by his own irony and humour
‘Don’t know about a horse Strikes me we’ll be lucky
if we ever get as far as the halter ’

That sprmg, just before Lily’s confinement, he did not
know where to turn for money They had existed during
the wmter on the twenty pounds his aunt had lent him
and on a little money that Lily had brought from home
He was worried, not for himself, but for Lily, accustomed
for so long to the good living of the Thompson household
He was oppressed, too, by the thought of the birth, by the
fear that something might happen to Lily He thought of
it m the field, only comforting himself by the thought of a
son, thinking of how the son would grow up and help him
on the land and be a credit and a comfort to him Worried
by the money, he went to see his aunt She lent him
another twenty pounds, gave him a glass of wine, and dis-
coursed as he had never heard anyone but his father dis-
course on the great future that was to be for small, one-
man holdings such as his own ‘I shan’t see it, but you
will When the railway comes you’ll be able to put your
stuff m the tram in the morning and know it’ll be in
London during the afternoon And perhaps eaten before
night I know what I’m talking about In a year or two,
if you’re sharp, you’ll be making money ’

Warmed by the wine and impressed and excited by her
words, he stayed talking longer than he had intended

THE POACHER

When he arrived back home, just after ten o’clock, Lily
was in great pain

Towards morning the child was bom It was a girl
As he walked up the deserted road to the field in the early
daylight, he felt as though he had invested his money in
something and had been cheated ‘What use is a gaP’ he
kept thinking ‘God almighty, what use is a gal to me^’

2

Already, by the end of the summer, a small farmyard
had sprung up in the comer of the field a rmg of hovels
and sties, with a copper-house for boiling the wmter pig-
potatoes, and a stack of hay gathered from the remaining
stnp of grassland By August the corn was golden and
resplendent, the ears sim-bleached and heavy, the oats
pinkish and trembling in the hot breeze From the
beginmng of the month he mowed and bonded the suc-
cessive crops with a labour that only broke off when he ate
and slept The oats first, then the white-eared wheat, and
at last, at the beginning of September, the barley He was
a good mower, easy, long-winded Yet there were times
when he thought it would almost kill him when he would
straighten his back and gaze up and suddenly see the whole
world of stubble and corn and shocks revolving dizzily in a
kmd of momentary faintness He worked alone, without
help He had chenshed a hope of some help from Lily, but
It never came Almost every day she would come up to
the field with the baby, but never to work Once he sug-
gested It, taking the wheat-straws and showmg her how
to knot the bonds and tie the sheaves It was beyond her.
She could not see it And he went over the demonstration
again, slowly, and then agam, more slowly, twisting the
cars together with accentuated simphcity, but without

152

THE LAND

effect She tried for a little while, but the sheaves, when
he picked them up, came untied, and she gave it up He
never mentioned it again And she would sit all day under
a shock or in the shade of the hovel, suckhng the child or
playing with the pink and white trumpets of convolvulus
flowers or, more often, readmg Some sunflower seeds
which she had sown by the hut had grown up taller than
the com, with great sun-blossoms, and she hked to sit by
them, reading or staring across the field into space, or
watcinng the flowers revolve with the sun And he, from
the field, would look up, and gaze at her, and wonder
what she was thmking and what world she lived in

And gradually, almost without thinking, he began to
see that it was not his own world, and that the land meant
nothing to her It was as though, by years of living close
to It and yet never on it, she had grown indifferent to it
She had never worked In thmking of her he would
think automatically of his mother, would see her with
leather-coloured arms bmdmg endless sheaves or shocking
them or gleaning across the empty field, sweating and
desperately pushing her straggling gipsyish hair out of her
sun-squinted eyes And then he would see Lily, hving in
a different world, a world of romantic mdolence that he
could never fathom, with a child that he scarcely felt was
his own

But strangely, though she never worked, she was am-
bitious for him She wanted him to succeed The labour
of turning the bare land to crops, of making the earth
flower and yield, was a sort of romantic miracle to her
She loved it, in silence and without expressing it, so long
as she never took part m it It was as if there was no need
for her to work She could accomplish aU she wished by
dreams, without sweat or pain And as she sat in the yard,
under the haystack or by the sunflowers, she would dream
and change it aU change the little ramshackle farmyard

153

THE POACHER

to one stretching over half the field, the field itself to
twenty, the sohtary scythe to many binders She would
dream it until, sometimes, it became an actuality in her
own mind They were rich, they had a carnage and pair,
their fields were teemmg with cattle and '’corn And
havmg made that world, she would live m it, and then
dream of a world of even finer and more luxurious achieve-
ment beyond it, and then live in that, dreammg of another
and more impossibly lovely world still farther beyond
Thus, though she never worked, it was she m a sense
who kept both him and the field alive Her ambition was
the spirit behind all he did She was never satisfied by
the present, by things as they were She wanted per-
petually to be going forward, into the unknown and
inevitably romantic future So, towards the end of harvest,
when he was faced with the problem of carting and
stacking his corn, it was she who urged him to buy a cart
and horse, as though it were the first step towards the
carnage and pair of her imagination He was hesitant,
fnghtened by an expense he could not see his way to meet
And It was she who went to an Orcester brewer, m her
maiden name, and bargained with him to make an offer
for the barley as it stood With the promise of that money
he bought the horse he had often borrowed from the baker,
and a black low-spnnged cart on two wheels from some
travelling gipsies It was Lily who painted his name on
the cart ^Luke Bishop, Hawthorn Farm, Nen weald,’ m
white letters, with flounshes, m the face of his amusement
and embarrassment at the high-sounding name ‘Haw-
thorn Farm ^ ’ he said ‘ There’s a lot o’ hawthorn— but not
much farm ’ She was mdignant ‘But there will be,’ she
insisted ‘There i£;2Z/ be ’ She almost made him believe m
her dream of what the place would be
Later, when the harvest was over, she urged him to
build a stable She made the plans herself, while he went

154

THE LAND

down with the cart to Nenweald and bought up loads of
disused cheap packing cases Her plans were almost
ludicrous, It was as though she wanted to create room not
for the horse they did possess but for all the horses they
might possess in years to come And when by the end of
October the stable was finished it was utterly unlike the
place she had planned Expense and time and labour
had killed her romantic notions one by one The stable
was a square shed bmlt with sections of many packing
cases tarred black, with an iron roof and a rough bnck
floor It was just large enough for two horses, but it was
so low that Luke was forced to stoop inside it There was
no ventilation, so that the stench of urme and unne-sodden
hay hung about it thickly, unable to escape Yet Lil)
never saw m it anythmg but the place of her own concep-
tion, the spacious stable for many horses She never saw
It with her physical, mortal eyes, but only with the glori-
fying eyes of her imagmation and her dreams She was
not even content with calling it the stable To her it was
always in the plural, the poetic plural The stables ’ And
she would say it with her rather chpped, haughty accent,
so different from his own droll and lacomc speech, so that
the word took on even finer and more aristocratic shades of
meaning

From the very earliest she began to teach the child her
own ways As with the stable and the field she saw not the
child of the present, but of the distant future She saw it
grown up, a beautiful and sensational creature In her
imagination she hved over the love affairs it would have,
grand, impossible romances mto which she put all the
feeling she herself had known and all that she had ever
wanted to know It was a kmd of game played m the
recesses of her mmd, tenderly and ndiculously

^You got big ideas for that gal,’ he would say, ^ain’t
ye^’

155

THE POACHER

'For Lizzie^ OIi^ There’s no telling what she will be*
There’s no telling ’

He never interfered with her or with the child He saw
them, from the earliest, growing up together Slaving
from morning to dark in the field, he had only time to
marvel at it all It struck him as odd that he had married
her, that the child was his, that life had changed He had
no time to go any deeper than that

After another winter and another spring things began
to look up He had broken up by that time all but a
narrow strip of the land And on the arable section he
was growmg, on his aunt’s advice, more vegetable produce,
roots and potatoes and cabbages, with plots of lettuce and
radish and peas and beans In the growing town more
and more shops were opening up He began to supply
them He bought a score of fowls In the spring and
summer he would set off twice a week with the little cart
piled high with eggs and vegetables, sheaves of carrots,
sacks of cabbages, skips of potatoes, with the eggs lymg
brown and white in boxes of sweet hay In a small way he
was successful He was astonished at himself He found
it necessary to begin to keep accounts, it was no longer
enough to put the money m a sugar basin m a cupboard,
and since he could do very little more than sign his name
It was Lily who kept the accounts, dreaming over the
figures, magnifying them to impossible proportions It
was she who also urged him to buy the larger cart in time
for harvest and to plant the bushes of gooseberry and red
and white currant and the trees of apple and plum at the
end of the year

He was occupied during almost the whole month of
December with the planting of the trees He fenced off a
section of land just below the farmyard and planted the
trees m hnes, the gooseberries and currants close together
between the taller trees It was pleasant work, he could

150

THL LAND

take his time, he was his own master And when the work
was finished he was filled with great satisfaction He
would stand and look at the little white tree labels flutter-
ing m the winter wind and at the bare grey branches
swaying slightly against the winter sky It was Christmas
by the time he had finished On Christmas Eve Lily
balanced up the accounts On the year’s working they
were twenty pounds to the good, not counting their profit
m kind, in the flour from their own wheat and their own
potatoes He stood slightly dazed at the quantity of
money, gold and silver, lying on the table in the lamp-
light He took some of it and jingled it in his fingers
Finally he took half a sovereign and with a curious sensa-
tion of guilt and pleasure walked up into the streets of
Nenweald and bought a doll for the child, a string of
pink beads for Lily and a new Sunday hard hat for himself
It was the year 1885 He felt extraordinanly elated
He had killed a fowl and had sent it, a peace offenng, to
his mother, and she, in return, had put down her pride
and had been to see Lily and himself and the baby He
felt also a singular sense of peace and security He wanted
nothing finer or higher in life If, as she expected, Lily
was going to have another baby, aU he asked was that it
should be a son He asked no more than that
Lily alone was unsatisfied.

^57

CHAPTER II

I

One winter afternoon, in the yard, he stood idle under
the cart-hovel, watching a hare Ram had been falhng
heavily all day He could see the dark reflected clouds m
the vast acres of flood-water extending far along the valley
The hare, light-coloured, almost golden against the rain-
soaked earth, was runnmg diagonally across the field m
sudden starts of play and alarm, doubling and loping
firom side to side as it made for the lower hedge He
waited for it to disappear Ram was still falhng, m de-
sultory spits that flecked and nnged the clay-coloured
puddles about the yard The hare was full-grown, a
beauty Then it struck him suddenly that it was the first
he had noticed m the field If he had ever seen another
It had been unconsciously And he stood transfixed m
wonder

When the hare had disappeared he found a length of
wire and walked down the field, looping the wire as he
went The spot where the hare had vanished was clear in
his mind The land was sodden, the water squelching back
everywhere mto his footmarks It was late January, his
wmter wheat was up and the young com shoots lay
flattened on the earth, like wet flags As he went along
under the hedge his shoulders brushed oS drops of ram
that hung on the reddish hawthorn twigs like beads of ice
And standing still he could see where the hare had capered
across the wheat Its httle footpnnts had filled up, like
his own, with yellowish water And then he saw the gap
He went down on his knees to examine it He could see
by the broken brown skm of the split hawthorn twigs and

158

THE LAND

the foot-padded earth that it was qmte old It had been in
use a long time Mystified^ he thought H ain’t above
half-alive Damn, I must go about with me eyes shut ’ He
had scarcely to press back a twig or move a single grass in
order to set his snare It seemed too good to be true And
as he threaded the wire-loop and sharpened the ash-peg
he felt a strange sense of excitement He could hardly
bear it Something out of his past hfe came back to him^
lik e a suddenly recollected emotion His hands made the
wire-loop almost unconsciously He was hke a swimmer
cutting the water for the first time after a long absence
He sharpened the ash-peg carefully, and then slit it, very
lightly, and then turned it round and round in his hands
and looked at it It was a beautiful peg He had never
made a better peg Then he went down on his knees and
looked at the gap again He squinted through it hke a
man taking a gun-sight Beyond the hedge the next field
was pasture By squinting through the run he could see
across the grass the thin slightly padded tracks the hares
had made by runnmg to and fro There were two tracks,
and then he saw a third They converged upon the gap
like wheel-spokes That meant that there were three at
least and perhaps more hares passing regularly from one
field to another He stood up He could scarcely believe it
He had been going about with his eyes shut He had been
so absorbed m the breaking up and planting of the field
that he couldn’t see what was under his own eyes Christ,
he was a born fool ^ He wiped the wire with his handker-
chief and then, instinctively, without thinking, glanced
round the field There was not a soul in sight, nothing
moving except the desultory rain and the boughs of the
distant ash trees swinging flexibly up and down in the wind
He bent down and with his handkerchief gloved over his
fingers set the snare He moved with extreme lightness,
scarcely touching the wire And then, having finished it,

159

THE POACHER

he stepped back, at first two paces and then another
At the third pace the peg and bhe wne could not longer
be distinguished from the twigs of hawthorn

In the mormng, coming down the field m the half-day-
hght, he found the hare, a buck, dead m the gap Theie
was no sign of a struggle, no blood, no tom fur The wire
had pulled up with extraordmary smoothness, like light-
mng, throttlmg the hare m a second He felt a sense of
almost fierce elation as he unwound the snare and put the
wire m his pocket and went up the field with the hare in
his hand

He was so elated that he did something that mormng
he had never done before Instead of eating his second
breakfast m the hovel he went back home, just for the joy
of showmg Lily the hare It was already nme o’clock when
he returned, but Lily was still not up He called upstairs
She answered sleepily Then he lumbered upstairs, carry-
ing the hare When he reached the bedroom he held the
hare behind his back, wantmg to surpnse her Lily was
lymg half-asleep m the iron skeleton bed, with the child,
Lizzie, still asleep beside her He stood looking at them
both, half-smilmg, happy at the thought of surpnsmg Lily,
and all the time holding the hare behind his back Lily
was expectmg a second baby in the spnng and she was
lymg on her side, her eyes frill of sleep, her hair m white
curhng-rags

‘What’s the matter^’ she said ‘What have you come
back for^’

‘I got summat for you ’

He whipped the hare fix>m behmd his back A spot of
the nose-blood, still not dry, flicked off and fell on the bed
Lily sat bolt upnght m bed and shneked

‘What IS it^ For Gk)d’s sake, what is it^’

‘What’s a’ matter^’ he said, slowly ‘It’s only a hare
That’s all What’s a* matter^’

160

THE LAND

‘ Oh ^ It’s awful. It’s awful * Take it away, take it down-
stairs ’

Quite suddenly she began crying The noise of her
weeping and shouting woke the child, who sat up in bed
and began crying too He stood there bewildered The
hare hung down at his side He did not know what to do
Lily looked strange and dowdy as she sat up in bed weep-
ing, her curl-ragged hair falling about her face, which she
had hidden in her hands Finally he went towards the bed,
ready to say something, and he had already stretched out
his hand to touch her when she aroused herself and began
shouting, her face white with the strain of her sudden rage
She shouted for almost a minute before he began to
understand the meaning of it all
‘It’s only a hare,’ he broke in once
‘Only a hare * Only a hare ^ That’s all you think, that’s
all you trouble How did you get it^ You poached it,
didn’t you^’

‘ On me own land I don’t call that poaching ’

‘You don’t call it poaching* Then what is it^ It isn’t
low-down cruelty, I suppose, is it^ If you think you’re
going back to that game, you’re much mistaken I won’t
have It I won’t have Lizzie grow up to be the child of a
poacher—you might as well know that now as later I
won’t have it*’ She had begim to wave her arms about
with extreme excitement, half-melodramatically ‘You
don’t want her to grow up ashamed of her father, do you^’
‘No But that ain’t poaching ’

‘I don’t care what you call it* I know what I call it*’
The child was crying more loudly than ever and suddenly
Lily put her arms round her and hugged her close to her,
as though she were in need of protection The sound of
Lily’s shouts and the child’s cries together grew mto a mad
confusion m Luke’s nund, and he went off mto a momen-
tary stupor of bewilderment Once or twice before it had

L i6i

THE POACHER

seemed to him that she was living more and more apart
from him, but the thought had never troubled him But
now he had a sudden suspicion, as she sat there in bed
hugging Lizzie protectively to her, that she wanted to
keep the child apart from him too
A moment later she confirmed it by a shout of defiance
H want the child to grow up respectable, if you donT*’
It hurt him only when she suddenly ceased her shouting
and turned to the child, lowenng her voice and saying
with softly bitter intimacy

‘We want you to grow up respectable, don’t we^ We
want you to, don’t we^ Don’t we^’

2

From that day he felt himself to be definitely in a world
apart from Lily He was forced more and more into him-
self and mto the land Ebs solitary pleasure became the
snaring of occasional hares He kept it up secretly, selling
the hares on the sly to old publican friends of his father’s
Negotiations took him into Nenweald, but he had never
time to huger m the place He saw the growth of the town
almost without realizing it, without seeing that it went
along side by side with the growth of his little farm
Already the American nver-digger had gone, the railway
station had been bmlt by the church, and there was talk
of trams in the streets He let it all go past him It meant
nothing to him, he had no comment on it For him the
atmosphere of the place remamed the same as ever the
smell of the pubs under the whitewashed archways, the
scent of the street hmes m summer, the water-smell by the
wharves where the barges came up laden with coal or
gram or timber He did not dream that it could change
or that a change, if it came, could affect him The same

162

THE LAND

two strata of the town’s society remained, he belonged to
the lower and knew it and had no notion of rising any
higher The time he had spent on the land had, if any-
thing, made him more uncouth Eatmg alone, in ravenous
snacks, among the pigs and hens, he behaved almost like
an animal himself, smacking his hps, dnnkmg his tea
with a fun mouth, with a sucking sound, wipmg his kmfe
across his mouth to lick off the gravy It was these things
that maddened Lily 'How do you expect Lizzie to eat
properly if you don’t^ Can’t you eat without making
people sick^’ He would try drmking his tea silently or
using his kmfe and fork m the proper manner, but the old
habits would come back and Lily would give it up m a
sort of savage despair

He cared very little Secretly, he centred aU his hopes
in the second child A boy would put him on equal terms
with Lily Looking into the future, he saw himself teach-
ing the boy to set a snare, to bait a line, to hold a scythe
They would work on the land together and then, at odd
times, do a httle poaching, on the qmet, just for amuse-
ment

The second child was a girl It was so like Lily that the
triumph over him seemed to be complete, and he went
back to work on the day of her birth with flat dejection
And instantly he began to see the future differently,
making comfortless prophecies about it in his mmd, think-
ing of how the two girls and Lily must grow up on one
side and he, all alone, on the other

And as though the bitterness of his disappomtment had
imconsciously given him the power of prophecy, the future
began to turn out as he had half-imagmed it By 1890 the
two httle girls, Lizzie and Ellen, had become little dolls,
with faces of white chma and fair fnzzy hair which
cnmped and rippled down their shoulders In their stiff,
thick-stuffed, many-pleated frocks they looked to him

163

THE POACHER

sometimes like little prim old women who would never
grow any taller They reimnded him very often of his own
two sisters proud eyes, haughty noses, rather sleepy,
languid lips Lily spoke a correct rather clipped speech and
in turn she taught it to the children He had only to say
^God a’mighty, it’s ’nation hot,’ for her to fly mto a rage
^ I won’t have it * I won’t have it * I’d rather they had their
tongues cut out than let them talk like that Don’t you
know any better^ ’ He had no argument, it seemed to hirg
the most natural speech m the world It was Lily’s correct
clipped speech that was full of falsity Yet he knew that
he had no chance agamst it or her ‘ brmg the children
up At least they shall be brought up by someone who can
read and write ’ Sometimes a litde of the old laconic irony
would flash out m return ^ Ah, I dare say Learn ’em to
be ashamed o’ their father and be done wi’t ’ But for the
most part he was too tired to argue, or too resigned Still,
sometimes, he would try to reconale the children In the
spnng a stray pheasant or partridge would nest m his
hedgerows or in the dead grass about the fhut trees and he
would bring home a capful of eggs ‘Fry ’em for the gals ’
But it was as though he had brought home snakes to be
cooked ‘I worCt have them I’ve told you before about
poaching ’ He would say ‘It ain’t poachmg, on me own
land How do you make that out^’ But she had only one
argument ‘I won’t have it Yours or anyone else’s land
I don’t care I won’t have it ’ So he would fiy the eggs for
himself, five or six at a time m the pan, taking them out
as he needed them and wipmg his bread m the pan when
they were gone and then burning the shells Even then
Laly would not trust him
‘What did you do with those eggs^’

‘Ah, I filed ’em aU Busted meself ’

‘Busted^ Busted^ What language is that^’

And two years later, in 1892, Lily did what seemed to

164

THE L\ND

him a more extraordinary thing than she had ever done
The new Act for universal compulsory education had been
passed, a new school had been built m Nenweald, and
Lily, Without warning, applied for a teacher’s post He
knew nothing of it until his mother, who came to see him
not more than once or twice a year, appeared one after-
noon, half-running, half-walking across the field to where
he was hoeing his barley It was May, a hot moist day,
and he could see the sweat standing on her forehead long
before she reached him

‘What’s a’ matter^’ he said

‘Make out you don’t know^’ she cned ‘Make out you
don’t know * ’

‘Know^ Know what^’ He stood leaning on his hoe,
scratching his elbow and squinting his eyes against the
strong sun

And suddenly, in angry tones, she told him how it was
all over the town that Lily had applied for the teacher’s
post and had been successful ‘All over the town*’ she
kept repeating ‘Everywhere ’

He stood in fixed meditation, trying to realize it

‘That’s a licker*’ he said at last He could think of
nothing else to say

‘A licker*’ His mother was furious Her black bonnet
shook up and down with anger For some reason she had
brought an umbrella and she kept shaking that also
‘Ain’t ye going to do anything about it^’

‘What the ’nation can I do^’

‘Ah, stick up for her,’ she taunted him ‘Stick up for
her ’

He could think of nothing to say or do either in answer
to his mother or m reproval of Lily He stood staring at
the earth There was a dock m the barley row and he bent
down, clenched the leaves and pulled it up He heard the
sharp snap of the root breaking oflF, and suddenly he

165

THE POACHER

remembered the day he had broken off a dock at Thomp-
son’s farm and Thompson had kicked him m the back It
seemed a long time ago He knew that at one time he
would have smashed Thompson in the face, and he knew,
similarly, that there had been a time when he would have
been furious with Lily But he was vaguely conscious that
he had changed, that something had happened to him,
that things which had been of importance were no longer
of so much importance or were of no importance at all
He raised his eyes from the earth and looked across the
field The hedge was thick with new green leaves and half-
opened creamy buds of May, so that he could see nothmg
beyond it His world seemed to end there He was not
even sure that he wanted it ever to go beyond it A curious
contentment had come over him, a sluggishness m his
blood, as though the soil had entered his vems
And he discovered suddenly that he was not thinkmg of
Lily, but only of the barley He was admmng it The
young slender shoots, drilled m straight parallel hues with
his new three-holed drill, looked beautiful in the sun He
had even forgotten his mother was standing there
‘Well, I got to git on wi’ this barley,’ he said
‘Ain’t you going to do nothing about it^’ she cried
‘She must do what she hkes ’

‘Going out to work*’ she half-shouted ‘Your father
would have knocked my head off ^ He’d have half-murdered
me A woman’s place is m the house, and if she ain’t
sharp enough to know that, then be God I’ll teU her*’

He had begun to hoe again, quietly, only half-hstemng
to what she was saymg, and finally she shouted
‘You’re a blamed sight worse’n she is*’

‘I dare say ’

She stood for a moment, antagonistically, before she
turned and went away across the field He turned once
and looked at her and then went on

i66

THE LAND

Lily had realized some part of an ambition The post of
school teacher was a first step into a higher life And being
something new, a httle daring, and against the conventions,
It was also romantic He saw this And dunng the first
few months of her school teaching he expected her at any
moment to tire of it, to come home and say that she had
given it up But for some reason or other she kept on And
so the space between them widened and kept widening
But It was without pain, now, as though they were utterly
hardened to it at last He would be up before five m the
morning, away to the field by six, and not back until
darkness, which would be at four or five in the winter and
never earlier than nine or ten m the summer Lily and
the two girls would be at school by nine each mormng and
back again by four in the afternoon So that he saw them,
sometimes, for no more than an hour or two a day, the
girls sometimes not at all They would be asleep when he
returned from the field and either he would be too tired
to go and look at them, or he would forget Often he
would come m, take off soil-dusty or muddy boots, thrown
them under the kitchen stove, sit in a chair to rest a
moment, and drop off to sleep There were times when he
worked on, at harvest time, m the fine August moonhght,
and when he sat up all night with a farrowing sow He was
fond of his pigs He kept them zealously, raised litters,
chose the best for breeding or killing and marketed the rest
He bought a large barrel and for a time kept it outside
the back door of the house, so that neighbours could
empty into it all sorts of refuse, cabbage stalks, bread,
potato peel, rotted fruit, for his pig swill Then Lily pro-
tested ‘It’s disgustmg, filthy I want to be sick whenever
I look at it^’ So he removed it, getting the garbage by

167

THE POACHER

taking the barrel from house to house on his flat cart and
making a collection hke a scavenger That made Lily more
furious still, so furious that, meeting him trundling about
the streets with the barrel, she would disown him And
then he noticed that the children began to use the jfront
door, an unheard-of innovation Only the select, moneyed,
leisured classes used the front door It was sacred He
knew of front doors that had remained shut for so long that
they had stuck or jammed and could never, except by
force, be opened again He, like all workers, came in at
the back, wiping his boots on the door-sack And the use
of difierent doors seemed to set them farther apart stiU
The two doors in actuahty led into different streets, and the
streets seemed to lead mto different worlds
And in his world, so very small, bounded by the four
hawthorn hedges of the field, he lived simply and a bit
crudely, in communion with himself and the land and the
few animals he had He ceased after a time to trouble
much about ambition Then, by the end of the century,
he ceased to trouble about it at all He began to do the
same things year in, year out He exhausted all the
variations of crop rotation He fell mto a rut Now and
then he suffered a catastrophe swme-fever devastated his
pigs, a thunderstorm laid his wheat beyond recovery, a
fox broke m and slaughtered his hens, but somehow, at the
end of each year, he seemed to stand where he had stood
at the end of the last There was never a time when he
could not pay his rent But similarly there was never a
time when he could rent another acre or two of land, or
buy another horse or hire another man He never took a
holiday He felt that he had some sort of duty to his pigs
and hens and he would never leave them So he became
more and more sohtary, bound up in himself, always
working alone, sometimes not speaking to another soul
dunng the whole day, but only talking to himself in a half-

i68

THE LAND

conscious mutter of comfort or rebuke or introspection as he
worked backwards and forwards across the unchanging
field

But though the field seemed to remam the same he
himself, in appearance more noticeably, began to change
As a youth, and beside his father especially, he had been
extremely thin, almost spidery, walkmg with a perpetual
slouch and swagger, his face sallow and almost fleshless
The perpetual work on the land thickened him so that,
though he was never fat, he began to have a sohd and
muscular appearance He was more like his father His
arms were like stocky clubs made up of many knots and
twists of whipcord, the colour of some coppery-red cow
His face was hke an Indian’s, though altogether milder,
with no fierceness at all, his eyes a sky-grey, distant and
full of a meditative quietness But strangely, though he
was thicker and more powerful, he seemed to be smaller
He was not so tall by an inch or two He walked with a
slight stoop, his head sunk It was at first a stoop of
necessity He stooped to hoe or to hold the plough handles
or to swmg his scythe or to plant his potatoes Then it
became habitual He stooped wherever he went, whatever
he was doing, without ever being aware of it except when
Lily, infuriated, drew his attention to it

"Hold yourself up^ You’re beginnmg to stoop like an
old man Hold yourself straight ’

She herself, like the girls, had a rigid, broad-backed
figure, corseted mto contemporary shape by tremendous
whalebone stays which, when he saw them lying about in
the bedroom, made him wonder how she ever moved or
breathed She cultivated a style of hairdressing, pihng the
hair mto a high cone, which made her seem even straighter
and taller than she was Then when neck-fhlls, bone-
sided, became fashionable she wore those also, so that
sometimes, towards the end of the century, he would think

169

THE POACHER

of her as a stick dressed up And the years of school-
teaching had already left their mark on her as plainly as
the land had left its mark on him She spoke and acted m
a frigid, domineermg way, her speech rapped out in com-
mand or reprimand, her voice high-pitched But like him
she was unaware of the changes m herself And though he
saw them he said nothing, just as he said nothing when she
invited other school teachers or ladies of the town to tea
in the front parlour and set out his own cup and plate in
the kitchen at the back He would eat in comfort alone
' Bailed if the grub tastes the same/ he would think,
‘'among a ’nation lot o’ females ’

But she still remained, m a fitful way, not only ambitious
for herself and the girls, but for him too There was
scarcely a social, a conversazione, a meat tea, a jubilee
celebration to which she did not ask him to go if she were
invited And sometimes, dressed in his Sunday black, with
squeaky calf boots which he wore no more than five or six
times a year, he would go with her, the husband of Mrs
Bishop, the schoolrmstress He behaved tolerably enough
until he sucked his tea through his moustache like a pig
at trough or remarked 'Plenty o’ grub, missus Regular
slap-up Let’s have another mossel o’ that kid’s pap,’
meamng the trifle Then there would be fury, high-
sounding disgust and recnimnations when they got home
'Why did you go and pour your tea in your saucer^’
'Damn, it wor’ hot ’

'Hot^ You couldn’t let it cool, I suppose^ Oh no ’

'I bm harrowmg aU day I wor ready for that cup o’
tea ’

' Ready’ I should think so Scofiing it like a pig ’

'I wasn’t the only one as saucered I see one or two
chaps—’

‘Two blacks don’t make a white It made me sick’’
But after a time she seemed to forget it, her ambition for

170

THE LAND

him renewed itself, and she would try agam It was as
though, deep within her, she retained a scrap of im-
perishable gratitude towards him for taking her away from
Thompson and the stiff mtolerable life of the farm She
had sense enough to see that but for him she would never
have been where she was And m a sense, except for his
lapses of taste and behaviour, she was happy where she was
She had gamed for herself a sort of independence, based at
first on a harmless notoriety and then on complete re-
spectability And the two girls, who were already pro-
bationary teachers too, seemed to consolidate that happi-
ness

And then, at the very end of the century, when there
was nothing but talk of change and hope and the glorious
future and the new age, something happened to make her
happier still

The headmistress of the school died, the post was thrown
vacant, and Lily succeeded to it
Luke stood amazed, dazzled by the event, and m a
vague way a httle proud of Lily

‘'Damn,’ he said, ‘you’re notch above a tapper now ’
‘Don’t use such talk^’ she said ‘Common expressions*
I’d be above them ’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s right You’re top o’ the tree ’

‘ WeU, I suppose I am ’

‘Means some more dough, I warrant ’

‘There you go agam Dough* Isn’t it just as easy to
say money ^ ’

‘Money, then ’

‘Well, It does A httle But I need it I want to give the
girls a good start m life I want to see them get on ’

And at the end of the year, which was also the end of the
century, there were aU the ribald, illummated, shouting
celebrations The school held its special celebration, wel-
coming not only the new century, but the new head-mistress

171

THE POACHER

a meat tea^ fireworks to follow, banners and flags on the
school belfry, the playground lit up with gaslight It was
a kind of minor coronation for Lily, with the two girls,
like two princesses, strengthening the effect
At the last moment Luke, with a sow in farrow, found it
difficult to go He could only promise to try and drop in
for the midnight celebrations, and only that if the sow were
to dehver easily or qmckly So that, instead of going to
the celebrations, he sat with the pig m the lantem-ht sty,
on the new fragrant straw he had put down for her And
now and then he would leave the sty and go outside and
stand in the outside darkness, and look and listen The
sky above the town was filled with a soft arc of reflected
hght He could see the church spire The mght was very
still, the fields all about him full of the black silence of
wmter, and now and then he could hear the faint noises
of celebration, bugle-caUs, the playmg of the brass baud,
the crack of fireworks And the sky, sometimes, would be
spht by a rocket bursting mto sparks of crimson and blue
and emerald that vamshed more quickly than falling stars

tja

PA.RT IV

THE NEW CENTURY

CHAPTER I

I

At the beginnmg of the new century Nenweald was still
a little town It had all the littleness of self-satisfied con-
tent The railway had come, warehouses had begun to be
built beside it, and in the back streets more and more
factories had begun to sprmg up, flat-faced three-stoned
buildmgs sandwiched m between the rows of flat-faced
two-stoned houses New streets of red brick were being
built to the very edges of the green fields, and here and
there clubs and temperance halls and chapels, all of the
same red bnck, were rising up among the httle shops of
the fashionless country tailors and drapers who changed
their fly-specked windows once a week but m reahty never
changed them at all Nothing was being changed, only
something was bemg added The heart of the place,
exemplified by the httle chestnut-shaded Square lying close
under the big church, remamed fixed as though imal-
terable, its httle change a mere cycle of ritual, hke the
thickening and dying and falling of the chestnut leaves and
chestnut blossoms Old men sleeping and dozmg on sum-
mer afternoons in the chestnut shade were never disturbed
except by the passing of a chance threshing-machine or an
engine steaming to a fair And the men in green hvery or
sun-faded black and ageless top-hats waiting at the
station with their cabs and landaus for the arrival of the
tram could doze in peace too, smce the trains were few and
the passengers needing conveyances fewer still On those
summer afternoons the streets would be heavy with the
scent of street limes and the warm odour of horse-dung
mingled together, only the sudden acrid stink of leather

THE POACHER

and wax from some hot factory disturbing or overpowenng
It, the odour as prevalent as incense and as full of sleepi-
ness as the warm water-smell in the low-lying meadows at
the nverside They were scents and odours which were as
much a part of the place as the white-aproned shoemakers
fetching their Sunday dinners of batter-pudding from the
back-street bakehouses, or as the little backyard shoe-
making shops had been twenty and even ten years
before

For if nothing was changmg or seeming to change m
the place itself there was a change m the shoemakers With
the spnnging up of the factones the little individual shops
were dead or doomed The shoemakers were caught up
in an iron system of time, their independence began to
perish There were School Acts and Factory Acts The
little sweaters, boys the shoemakers had employed to run
eternal errands and wax eternal stnng with eternal sweat,
were caught up by the School Acts, the men were caught
up by the Factory Acts, and gone in a minute were the
half-days to watch a circus procession, the whole days to
follow the fox-hounds, the sobermg-up Mondays, the odd
hours off for political arguments or fights to settle what
Bradlaugh saud, and finally and most of all the long weeks
taken off in the late summer for the harvest The flame of
that shifting and mdependent life was suddenly snuffed
out And m its place came an artificial, fixed, incandescent
gas-flame kind of life, a life that burned for a given period
and was turned off It burned behind the thick glass
factory windows just as a gas burns behind the mantle-
globe, protected, shut away Then, when it was turned off,
for the dinner-hour or the evemng, some of the old hfe
flamed up agam At noon the streets were thronged, the
street-comer fights were renewed, the factories stood silent
Until suddenly the time-whistles or buzzers blew, there
was a bnef white fluttering of vamshing aprons, and the

176

THE KEW CENTURY

afternoon silence descended, a silence broken only by the
regulated moan and murmur of the machines, a curious
imprisoned, mournful sound, stifled, that never pene-
trated the unaltered somnolence of the Square under
the shadow of the chestnut trees

3

Up in the field, alone, Luke scarcely noticed the first
additions and changes in the life of the town below Days
melted mto each other and weeks and years mto each
other, without a perceptible difference, just as one century
had melted into another Time travelled past him hke a
wind He had no fhends In the early poaching days his
father had discountenanced the making of fnendships
‘We don’t trust nobody Why should we ^ Nobody trusts
us ’ The whole of that early hfe had been filled with
secrecy and a suspicion for other people that Luke had
never outlived In the new century there was no one to
whom he could turn for advice or help except his aunt, who
still lived on, very old and httle by little growing more
toothless and more sardonic and more difficult She had
begun to cut herself off from the world, leavmg notes on
the doorsteps for the tradesmen, never answering knocks
and seeing no one but him The decay and ache preceding
the fall of each tooth brought on alternate periods of
savagery and gloom She would sit with her face bound
up with a vast red silk handkerchief, the brandy bottle at
her side, her lower hp in a perpetual pout, lumps of
brandy-soaked cotton-wool and matchsticks ready on the
table beside her Now and then she would renew the
cotton- wool m the tooth, take a sip of brandy to fortify
herself, growl in firesh wretchedness The handkerchief
bound up over her ears made her a htde deaf, so that Luke,
M 177

THE POACHER

sitting on the other side of the fireplace, was obliged to get
up every time he spoke, funnel his hands over his mouth,
and shout

‘Have It out/ he would say ‘Be done with it ’

‘Eh^’

‘Have It out* Go and see Maudlin He’ll nip it out
afore you can wink ’

‘Um What about those mushrooms^’

‘What mushrooms^ I was talking about your tooth ’
He would get up, go over to her and shout into her ear
‘Your tooth*’

‘I can hear, I can hear ’

‘All nght Your tooth, why don’t you have it out^’
‘That’s what I say You promise things and then don’t
do ’em How’s Lily^’

‘All right ’

‘She never comes to see me ’

And then a twinge of pain, and then more cotton- wool
and more brandy, and after that a renewal of her re-
proaches and deafness and his own shoutmg
So that sometimes, when he had a problem to face or a
decision to make and would have otherwise discussed it
with her, he would let it pass and did not trouble her In
this way there were certain things which he let shde He
kept mtending to do things and never did them It
occurred to him that mstead of rentmg his field he imght
buy It, and he intended to discuss that with her and never
did

And so with his horse Ever smce the first years of the
httle farm he had kept a horse, generally a rough hght
carthorse which he could use both for the plough and for
the trap m which he sometimes drove Lily about the
countryside on summer evenmgs Periodically, as a horse
grew old and as he saw the chance of a bargain, he would
change one horse for another And there grew up a senes

178

THE NEW CENTURY

of unspoken fiiendships, so that he got to know a horse
intimately and hated to part with it
Then, as he was dnvmg out of Nen weald one August
morning, wondering if his oats would soon be ready, his
horse, a pure white, suddenly shpped, the cart lurched
askew across the road and the horse was down Staggering
out of the cart, he saw a sudden gush of blood on the white
horsehair where the shaft had punctured the flank
And almost before he could realize it the knacker’s
cart was there, he heard the dull flat report of the horse-
pistol and the dead horse was being loaded and driven
away

His oats were almost ready, harvest was coming on In
desperation, a bit stupefied, he took the tram next day to
Orcester and bought another horse, a hght brown mare,
from a dealer there When he arrived back at the field in
the late afternoon a stranger was sitting under the hay-
stack in the yard, waiting for him He wore a bowler hat
and carried a leather case with him
H represent the Eastern Counties Accident and Life
Insurance Company I hear jou’ve lost a horse,’ he said
rapidly
^Ah’

‘Was it insured^’

‘No’

‘Not insured* There you are* Now I represent the
Eastern Coimties Accident and Life Insurance Company
and we insure—’

They talked together for a long time m the yard, first
standing by the stack and then walking backwards and
forwards as Luke mixed the pig-swiU and went to and firo
with the buckets, the insurance agent jabbering and
following him wherever he went, Luke pronusing nothing
but ‘I ain’t got the new horse yet I’ll thmk it over I’ll
see at th’ end o’ the week ’

^79

THE POACHER

The next day the insurance agent amved again and
went on with the rigmarole like one of the talking-machines
jUst then commg mto populanty ‘We msnre against
accident, or disease, or fire, or lameness Or if your horse
goes sick—’

‘I never had horse go sick yet ’

‘Well, there’s a first time to everything ’

‘I’ll think It over I’ll see th’ end o’ the week ’

‘Thmk It over now I’ll wait ’

‘I am’t got time I want to git my oats knocked
down ’

Three mommgs later, as he went down the hedge-side
to catch the mare, he could see fi-om a distance that she
was lymg m the long ditch-grass She seemed to be in a
strange attitude, with her neck stretched out Hurrying
down, he found that she had noosed her head m a
fence gap, much as a rabbit would m a snare, and
that as she had pulled it out agam a bare fence-nad
had npped her neck She was already half-dead when
he reached her By the time he had run up to the
stable and back agam with a sack to staunch the blood-
flow there was nothing else he could do but give a
message to a passing carter and then wait for the knacker
to come

He went about for the rest of the day with a feehng of
bitterest anger, the only real bitterness he had felt smce
Thompson had kicked him And he felt it against himself,
for his own foohshness By evemng he felt exhausted by
It It seemed to go round and round inside him, as
though It could find no outlet
Gomg home, he sat down m the kitchen and took
off his dust-powdered boots and put them under the
stove He sat qmetly for a mmute or two with his sweat-
tired feet on the cool bncks, restmg, feehng a httle
bettor

i8o

THE NEW CENTURY

And then he thought he could hear someone crying
The sound seemed to come from the front parlour He
hstened The dismal fretting soimd was unmistakable
And then he could hear also a voice talking, upraised for
a moment, and then lowered, m a crescendo of earnest
insistence It seemed hke Lily’s voice, and after listemng
for another moment or two he got up and went into the
front parlour

He was still in his stockinged feet, he walked silently,
and Lily and Lizzie were startled when he opened the
door And for a moment the crying and the talking
ceased

He stood with his hand on the door-knob, confused, not
knowing what to say Neither Lily nor Lizzie spoke to
him He could see that Lizzie had been crying She was
sittmg on a horsehair sofa, with her handkerchief round
her fingers Lily was standing up

They stood like that for a moment or two, not speaking,
he stanng at them but neither of them looking at him,
until at last he asked what was the matter It did
not occur to him until he had asked the same thing a
second time that they might have heard about the mare
But It was too late then Lily, looking at Lizzie, was
saying

H think she had better tell you herself’

Lizzie shook her head

‘I think so,’ said Lily

Something in Lily’s voice, a httle hard and ironic-
ally aloof, reminded him of Thompson And he felt
a sudden flood of sympathy for the girl sitting there
with the tears beginnmg to run quietly down her face
again

'Come, come, my gal,’ he said, 'what’s a’ matter^’

Lizzie shook her head again, so that the falhng tears
were shaken off her face

i8i

THE POACHER

‘Trouble anew,’ he said, ‘without you tunin’ What’s a
matter, my gaP’

He spoke qmetly, the anger and bitterness about the
dead mare dissolved by his sympathy for her But the girl
did not speak and finally Lily said

‘Am I to tell him^’ And then began before the girl
could answer ‘If he had any eyes of course he could see
for himself’

The girl began suddenly to cry afresh, loudly, with her
head on her knees, m inarticulate despair

‘No use crymg,’ said Lily, and the voice agam remmded
him of Thompson ‘ Crymg won’t help it What’s done is
done ’

Then he saw the cause of it all And suddenly he felt
a return of all the anger he had expenenced dunng the
day And it returned not agamst himself or the horse but
against Lily He found himself suddenly raising his
voice

‘Why the ’nation don’t you leave the gal alone

Lily stared at him ‘Do you know what is the matter i* ’
she said She spoke m a voice that was horrified ‘ Do you
know she’s going to have a baby^’

‘God a’mighty, what if she is^’ he shouted

‘You don’t know what you’re saying'” she said.

‘Shut up’’ he shouted

Astounded, not knowmg what to say, she let him walk
past her without another word to where Lizzie was crymg
on the sofa And he, as he stood over the gul teUmg her
not to cry, to dry her eyes and to come to her senses, felt
suddenly a flood of qmet tenderness amountmg almost to
rehef

‘Come, come, God a’nughty, it’s nothing Anybody’d
t hink you’d lost a sovereign and found a farden You am’t
the fbrst Not m this family either As long as you know
who It IS, It don’t matter a sight ’

182

IHE NEW CENTURY

‘That^s what Fve been trying to get at from her all the
evening/ Lily said *But she will not tell me *

‘Shell tell me Come, come now Dry your eyes You
know who ^tis, don^t you^®

‘Yes’

‘Well, who IS it^’

‘He’s all nght Hell marry me *

‘All nght What’s his name^’

‘Walter Vine ’ She was beginnmg to cry again ‘He’s
all nght He’s a foreman ’

‘Whofor^’

‘Joyce’s It’s a good job ’

‘All right Dry your eyes That’s all nght You’d
better brmg this Walter m to see your mother ’

She was crying again, in a sudden burst of relief, as he
suddenly turned and walked out of the room, feeling
almost ndiculous m his soundless stockinged feet It was
not until he reached the kitchen and was drawing the
water to wash himself that he remembered that he had
said nothing to Lily about the mare He was too tired to
go back into the parlour to tell her then and it was not
until the following evemng that he said anything about it
to her at all By that time she had heard of it from some-
one else and he had hired another horse

3

Waiter became one of the family He was a tallish, fair-
haired young man with extremely fresh blue eyes and a
hght brown moustache of which he was very proud He
wore good serge smts and on Simdays a straw-hat or a
bowler He was a regular chapel-goer and sang in the
choir, and when he and Lizzie had been mamed and
were settled m the front parlour Luke would hear Walter

183

THE POACHER

practising his rich bass voice m the evenings, accompanying
himself rather solidly on the piano he had brought to the
house with him He had no parents, had lived in lodgings,
and was elated by the idea of marriage and a home And
from the very first Luke liked him, they got on well to-
gether Surrounded since the death of his father by
women, Luke felt an extraordinary sense of pleasure in
the thought of constant male companionship Walter was
a man of rational, logical views, Luke in a sense was a
mild revolutionary, and in the evenings after harvest they
would have long argumentative talks, oblivious of time,
so that finally Lizzie or Lily would need to call them to
bed Luke felt invigorated and refreshed With a lodger
m the house and the argumentative atmosphere it seemed
to him like old times And Walter brought him another
stimulus On Saturday afternoons and sometimes m the
evenmgs Walter put on old clothes and came to help in
the field He had a genius for construction He adored to
pull things down and build them afresh And the ram-
shackle cart-hovels and stables and hen-houses, built by
Luke nearly twenty years before and patched up ever
since by bits of rusted tin or corrugated iron, appalled him
They would have to be rebuilt Things would have to be
put on a proper basis Walter was amazed that anything
had survived, that Luke had escaped bankruptcy, and he
would walk about the stack-yard in silence, ruminating,
taking mental measurements, squinting his eyes, con-
structing It all afresh in his mind ‘You’re behind the
times, all behind,’ he would say ‘Things are altering
You must catch up ’ And he would go about knocking on
pieces of dung-rotted wood or patches of tin rusted by
time and weather almost to powder ‘It’s rotten,’ he
would say ‘The whole place is rotten ’ Then he arranged
for surplus packmg-cases to be sent up to the field from the
factory for which he worked, and then he would hear of

184

THE NEW CENTURY

cheap bncks or cheap wholesale lots of corrugated iron,
and Luke would fetch them in the cart And there he
would be, every Saturday, sawing and hammering with
immense energy between long mtervals of almost sombre
constructive thought, until gradually the place began to
change Fresh white wooden bmldings with shmy grey
iron roofs and bnck foundations sprang up mstead of the
ramshackle bramble-roofed hovels Walter fitted cunnmg
patent trap-doors to the hen-coops and proper drainage in
the pig-sties, the stable was reconstructed, and then an
entirely new cow-house made A cow was an ambition
Luke had never reahzed ‘ Call yourself a farmer and not
keep a cow'’ Walter would saw and hammer away m
disgust ‘You must have a cow ’ So they built a cow-
house, with room enough for six cows ‘You want room to
extend,’ Walter said By the time the cow-house was
finis hed it was wmter So Walter turned to the fruit-trees,
prumng them with rehgious care on cold fine winter
afternoons, so that they stood sparse and shapely against
the sky Then, when it was all finished and the wet and
cold and the short days of winter made new work im-
possible, Walter would come to the field for the mere
pleasure of walking about, sizing up his handiwork and
creatmg m his mind fresh worlds for summer and spnng
He was very proud, sohdly, decently proud of his work
But like Lily he was never satisfied He built new worlds
on the roofs of the old almost before the foundations of the
old were fimshed He hated to go back He had to turn
his back on the past and go forward And it plunged him
mto despondency and almost broke his heart when a fox
raided the reconstructed hen-house, burrowed under the
new wooden walls and took off half the hens It was not
the loss of the hens that humiliated him, but the thought
of gomg back mto the past that hurt him And he set
to work to build a bnck fox-proof barncade, two feet

185

THE POACHER

high, round the hen-house, so that it should never occur
again

In Walter, Luke saw the whole changing world of the
new century personified "No flies on Walter,’ he would
think Walter would get on He had the fervour and
ambition not only of youth but of youth fed on a new diet
of education Walter had no use for the old, physical,
swaggering, drunken, brawhng mode of hfe, glamorous
but wasteful, the life that the youth of Luke’s own day had
lived He worked hard and regularly, never drank, saved
his money, put in three evenings a week at the new mght
school, read Darwin and Dickens, and then still had time
to teach himself the theory of music Above all he had his
own gemus for construction, for planning what he would
do with the future, not content to let the future drift
towards him and carry him where it would And the
thmgs he planned to do were successful "On’y got to
think on it, Walt has, and it’s done,’ Luke would say
"Masterpiece*’

In every way the coming of Walter was like an injection
of new life Luke felt a sense of splendid rejuvenation
That winter Walter began to subscribe to a weekly paper
for smallholders in addition to the newspaper he already
took m every mormng In it were articles on the scientific
manunng of soil, the breeding of pigs, machinery, poultry
on up-to-date fines, marketing and distribution, rabbit-
keeping for profit, everything, all accompanied by ex-
planatory line-drawings of men drawing rule-straight drills
and furrows and growing perfect crops on perfect land
Luke and Walter read and studied it together Luke re-
garded it with the suspicion of experience, but to Walter
it was the stem pattern of perfection on which Luke had
to begin to remodel all his ways Thmgs had to be different
The old shifty, careless ways had to go Luke must keep
accoimts, put his money m the bank, have an eye to

i86

THE NEW CENTURY

business And sitting over the agncultural paper they
would plan great things together for the spring, a real
renaissance, a new glory

It was a renaissance that seemed of no importance at all
when sprmg did come and Lizzie had a son

187

CHAPTER II

I

TThe birth of a grandson was a miracle It put about
Luke’s head a kind of halo of absurd happiness and light
It forced him at once to live a life other than his own, the
boy’s life It filled him with an anxiety to live not as he
had always done, in the present and the past, but more as
Lily and Walter did, in the future He at once looked for-
ward with eagerness to the day when the boy would grow
up He began to shape his childhood and even his man-
hood for him The boy featured Walter, was very fair,
shm and hvely, with extremely light blue eyes Stroking
his very soft hair or touching his even softer skin Luke
would say 'A httle leveret Damn, he’s like a httle
leveret ’ Or ^Look at the size of that head That ain’t no
ordinary head He’s going to be a notch above Walt, you
can see that ’ And all day, on the land, he would go about
thinkmg of him, watching the road also on the chance that
Lizzie might be wheehng him out m his boat-shaped yellow
wicker parambulator, wretched if she did not come, full of
a kmd of silly tender delight if she did Then in the summer
the boy was christened There was the problem of his name
Lizzie would have him called Walter, but Walter objected
^ It’ll be Big Walter and Little Walter, ’ he said ^ That’ll mix
us up ’ He would have John But hearing it, Luke recited

‘Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,

Hold my horse while I get on,

If he ’

and that was the end of it Then Lily suggested Edward
‘After the Kmg,’ she said About that time a big new

i88

THE NEW CENTURY

chapel of red brick and slate had been built in the High
Street, with straight-backed, comfortless pitch-pine seats,
a gallery, and many brass gas chandehers and coloured
windows, a symbol of high respectabihty and the town’s
progress And finally the child, Edward, was the first to be
christened m it and Lizzie and Walter were presented with
a Bible mscribed to commemorate the occasion It was as
though the child had been dedicated to the church and
the throne And Lizzie and Walter foresaw for him a life
of extreme uprightness, godhness and ultimate success,
with a position perhaps in one of the new banks spnnging
up among the new shops and offices along the High Street
A new town was being made and Edward would grow
up with It The old stone houses were being pulled down
and shops of new red brick replacmg them, and it was a
good thmg Just as it was a good thing that the traffic of
barges was ceasing along the nver and that there would be
no more bargees invading the town on Saturday evenings,
brawling m the pubs, and heckhng the Salvation Army, as
It worshipped on the Square It seemed to Lizzie and
Walter that the entire remodelhng of the town’s life was
needed So much that was crude and coarse must be swept
away It was the age of tight waists and even tigher rules
of conduct, and Lizzie and Walter went to chapel twice on
Sunday and sometimes to a prayer-meeting during the
week, believing very much in the efficacy of prayer and
the respectability of holiness Once, after hearing almost
with tears a sermon on the evils of gambhng, Walter hur-
ried home, seized a box of dominoes and threw them on
the fire And the child, as soon as he could walk, was
taken to the chapel and the Sunday school Lizzie dressed
him very early in httle blue serge suits and m sailor-suits
of blue and white and a blue sailor’s cap with the name of
the ship in white letters round the bnm He would sit in
the choir with his father, invisible, starmg at the pink

189

THE POACHER

angels m the stained-glass windows or at the crotches
and quavers in the tune-book that his father gave him to
keep him quiet during the sermon and the prayers And
as he began to grow up he could feel the strange Sunday
silence hangmg over the town, over the fields, over the
whole world, as though it were a sm to move or speak
except behind the chapel doors and the pink-angeled
windows

So on Sundays he seemed to belong wholly to his father
and mother, to be part of their life, the life of respectabihty
and smging and silence But dunng the week he belonged
to Luke From the very first they began to grow up in
perfect understandmg In the long days before he began
at school the boy would be m the field all day He began
very early to behave with iimtative manfulness, spittmg
like his grandfather, switching his legs with an ash-stick,
scratchmg the sows’ backs, hoUoamg at the horse or the
hens On the scorchmg hot days of harvest Luke would
put him to sleep m the shade of a wheat-shock, on wet
days they would sit imder the hovel or in the stable They
would sit watchmg the contmuous western ram falhng
softly over the dark land, nothmg disturbing the mono-
tony of Its fall except the sleepy chuckmg of the cooped-up
hens, and Luke’s voice tmwmdmg like a tangled wool-
skem some story of him and his father poachmg, r unnin g
firom the pohce or fightmg with the keepers, the story itself
broken only by the boy’s eternal questions
‘Why’d you do it m the dark'* At mghts^’

‘Safest Get pulled too easy in dayhght ’

‘What’s pulled^’

‘Pulled^ You know that Collared Clap you m quod
afore you can wink ’

‘Did you ever get pulled^’

‘Near as mck it Times ’

‘And m quod^’

190

THE NEW CENTURY

‘No Had some near squeaks But they never got
me Same with th’ old Dad We were too fly for
’em ’

‘What’s fly^’

‘Fly You know that God a’mighty, you’re fly enough
yourself ’

And then the tale would be renewed, the questions
would break it again, and so on, until the ceasing of the
ram would end it all Then, m season, Luke would set a
snare or two and the boy would go along the hedge-sides
with him

‘You keep your eyes open while I’m a-bendmg down
See anybody^’

‘No Yes' Man on a bike ’

‘Ain’t looking'*’

‘No It’s all nght He’s gone ’

And the boy would stand under the hedge in tense
silence, hstenmg and watching, his heart thundermg,
while Luke set the snare
‘Anybody about'*’

‘No’

‘All right ’ And then always the last warning, secretive,
and mtensely senous

‘Know what I told you"* You don’t let on to your Dad
about this^’

‘No’

‘Never^’

‘No’

‘All right Don’t you never let on Never D’ye under-
stand that'* Never ’

It was a wsLrmng he spoke always with almost desperate
earnestness, knowing perfectly the consequences of its
bemg disobeyed He saw clearly the chances of the boy
bemg snatched away from him, how easily the new,
respectable school-and-chapel life would claim him And

THE POACHER

sometimes, as they sat in the cart-hovel, he would catechize
the boy

'What do they learn you at Simday school, eh^ Jesus
and all that^’

'And Moses A lot about Moses ’

' Striking the rock and gettin" the water out^ That tale^ ’
'It^s a nuracle ’

'Miracle^ Who said so^ You don’t beheve he got that
water out, all of a pop, like that^ It’s only a tale, made up
Don’t ye know that^ It’s only a lot o’ popery ’

The boy would consider this It was impressive Moses
would wage against his grandfather in his mind
‘What else do they tell you^ About the bulrushes^
That tale^’

‘Yes About the baby ’

‘That’s a good tale ’

‘It’s true, though ’

‘It ain’t true’ It’s popery See that^ Made up God
a’mighty Bulrushes ’ Ah, come on, let’s get on and cut
them cabbages ’

All the time Walter and Lizzie were saving money so
that the boy might go away to school Lizzie, like Lily,
kept on teaching Walter worked hard and soberly at the
factory So that the boy, m a sense, led two hves, absorbing
them both, not differentiating between them, steahng
pheasants’ eggs as easily as he said his prayers and learning
to set a snare as quickly as he learned the Creed He was
growing up gentle, qmck-witted, rather hke Walter, with
a passionate energy for doing thmgs, for going forward
It seemed already that he would get on in life, do great
things, be somebody At times, in the evenings, he would
sit on a stool by the fire and read aloud to Luke firom the
newspaper, stuttenng out the longest words, mastering the
pohtical news as easily as the trivialities and the gossip
‘Read that bit again No fixed abode ’

192

THE NEW CENTURY

‘James Church, drover, no fixed abode, was to-day
summoned at Orcester ’

‘Thought I kno wed him Drunk^*

‘Drunk and disorderly at Orcester market on Wednes-
day last, and for using obscene language towards—’
‘That’s it That’s him Never could hold his beer ’
‘Defendant was fined ten shillmgs or one month ’
‘Take the month?’

‘Yes Defendant—’

‘That’s the boy, I knowed ’im I recollect the time—’
And the newspaper would give way to remimscence, the
reminiscence resolvmg itself into a story, the story winding
on and on with everlastmg fascination, unbroken until
Lily or Lizzie or even Walter came m and brought it
abruptly to an end

‘ Give over. Father, give over, do Filling the boy’s head
with nonsense, silly tales Give over ’

They had begun to call him Father It was more re-
spectable, more high-sounding, a httle impersonal It was
an indication of the changes that were coming over the
house as well as over the town He could see or sense
endless changes everywhere No one but himself now
washed at the sink m the kitchen, or sat by the fire and
took off their boots and set them to dry, sideways, by the
stove The rest of the family washed upstairs Only he
splashed and spluttered at the sink, naked to the waist, his
breeches held up by his twisted braces And he sensed,
vaguely, that he was becoming an outsider, different, a bit
common For years he had never felt close to Lily, and
now, as years went by, he began to feel more distant than
ever Blouses were commg mto fashion, and Lily wore one
of a striped shirt pattern, with the close mascuhne collar
brooched at the neck, her relentless corsets s tiffening and
repressing her bust to an iron shape, so that at fifty she
had a look of extreme, almost military uprightness and
N 193

THE POACHER

seventy She smelt of camphor And he could see her, in,
imagination, addressing the children of her school as some
times she addressed Eddie and even himself m the home
'Eddie' Luke' Will you learn to behave yourselves^’ And
then he ivould try to disentangle from the past an image of
her as he had first known her, very long ago, on the
Thompsons’ farm But he could never do it It was as
though he had seen her in a dream as though time had
worked some curious tnck of metamorphosis on her Then
he would thmk that perhaps it wasn’t Lily who had
changed or was diflferent, but himself He was an old toad,
a fool An easy-going old fiib No good Where had he
got m thirty years ^ Nowhere He was nobody They
were all getting on, farther and higher m the world, except
him It was only the boy, and the constant thought and
hope for him, and m return the boy’s worship of himself,
that saved him firom the completest self-negation and
despair

There were times also when he suspected that Lily, the
two girls and Walter were together m some kind of con-
spiracy agamst him Walter rarely came up to the field
All his work there was a thing of the past He was ad-
vancing towards something else, conceivmg new ideas He
had been promoted to choir-master at the chapel, was
studying music zealously, and had taken some shares in
the partnership of the boot factory He was talked about,
respected, a little envied When neighbours were troubled
by some mtncate form that had to be filled up they came
to Walter, and Walter signed the form, straightened things
out, gave them advice He had no longer any time for the
old evemng arguments with Luke, the warm discussions of
his early marned life His time was whoUy occupied But
he was still hkeable, fiiU of life, fhendly It was only that
he was hving more and more apart, m the new life of
chapels and town-progress and busmess Once or twice

194

THE NEW CENTURY

Luke expected that Walter and Lizzie would move, with
the boy, to a house of their own, one of the many new bay-
windowed houses that were already eating up the green
fields But hving altogether with Luke and Lily made it
possible for Lizzie to go on teachmg while Emma did the
housework, and Lizzie and Walter could go on saving
money for the boy’s education So they remamed, waiting
with a kind of tender, blind patience for the day when the
boy would be able to go away, Luke dreadmg the approach
of the time even more than they ever hoped for it
And sometimes it was as though the whole family half-
suspected that he would one day upset all their plans, so
carefully and beautifully laid, for their own and the boy’s
progress He could think of no other reason for the con-
spiracy they seemed to hold agamst him
Then as he sat m the kitchen, one evenmg, pulling off
his boots, Lizzie came in and went out again quickly
without speaking A moment later he could hear her voice
in the front parlour The doors stood open, her voice was
not lowered, and he could hear Lily’s plainly m answer
He smells,’ Lizzie said ^ Go and say something to him ’
‘Aren’t I for everlasting saying something to him^’
‘He’s been cleaning pigs or something ’

‘I’ve spoken to him until I’m tired of speaking ’

‘It’s disgusting One can taste it ’

Then Lizzie came back He was standmg at the smk,
in his stockinged feet, preparing to wash Lizzie came m
and said

‘Father, put your boots outside ’

‘Ah, they won’ hurt, my gal ’

‘Father, do as I say ’

‘What’s a’ matter wi’ em^’

‘You know what’s the matter Put them outside ’

‘Ah, stink a bit, do they^ It’s only a mossel o’ pig muck
I bin cleaning out ’

195

THE POACHER

'Then you’d better give up keeping pigs ’

'Give up keeping—’

'Yes, and another thing Get yourself a shave You
look like a tramp ’

'It’s on’y Tuesday/ he said 'Shavmg night’s a’
Wednesday ’

'Well, get one now for a change^’

'But shaving night’s a’ Wednesday/ he said
'I don’t care if it is Suddenly she began to shout 'If
you can’t come home a httle decent you must be made
to^ I’ve stood It long enough You live among pigs and
thmgs until you’re nothing better than a pig yourself
'Ah*’ It was a return of the old ironical, casual
half-bitter tone of his youth 'And I’m ye Dad, too,
am’t P’

'That’s no reason why you should make me ashamed
of you, is it^’ she shouted

She suddenly lifted the boots off the stove, opened the
door and flung them into the yard outside, and then
vanished into the parlour without another word
He stood staring out of the window, his hands feeling
for the water m the wash-bowl, his nund dead It was the
first time they had shown him openly that they wanted
to be rid of him

And then, not long afterwards, he came home one
evenmg to find Lily and the two girls and Walter sitting
silent round the hvmg-room, starmg at each other
solemnly, as though at a meeting of some parochial com-
mittee They did not speak as he came m
'Where’s the boy^’ he said

They did not answer and for a moment he felt uneasy
'Ain’t nothm’ up^’ he said
Then Lily spoke 'He’s in bed,’ she said
'A-bed^ What’s a’ matter^’

She began to raise her voice 'You ought—*

196

THE NEW CENTURY

‘Just a minute. Mother,’ Walter said ‘I’ll say what
there is to say ’

They were all silent for a moment Luke stared They
sat more than ever with a kind of parochial solemmty, all
looking at each other, as though not danng to look at
him It was early autumn, there were only faded summer
flowers and grasses m the fireplace and the room seemed
chilly At last Walter said

‘I won’t have it. Father Not for nobody I won’t
have It ’

‘What’s a’ matter, Walt, what’s a’ matter^’

‘He’s responsible—’ Lily began

‘Now, Mother, now,’ Walter said He paused a moment
Luke waited, and then Walter said
‘Eddie’s been caught m Chelston woods with a snare
in his possession ’

‘Eh^ What, what’’

‘Eddie’s been caught m Chelston woods,’ Walter said
‘By the keepers With a snare m his pocket ’

‘A snare? What happened? What’d they do to the
boy?’ And then the folly of it struck him ‘What the
’nation was he doing in a wood wi’ a snare? A snare ain’t
no—’

‘Never mmd about that,’ said Walter
‘All nght AU right What’d they do to the boy?
Eh?’

‘They asked him who he was,’ Walter said
‘Ah’

‘Instead of telhng them properly, he told them he be-
longed to you, Luke Bishop ’

‘Never? That’s a clinker ’

‘It hardly made it any better,’ Walter said
The force of the words struck him unexpectedly, so that
he could say nothing He stood starmg, wretched, a little
bewildered

197

THE POACHER

‘They knew m a minute what that meant/ Walter
said

He had nothmg to say

‘Now, Father,’ Walter said, ‘I won’t have it Not for
nobody It’s gone on long enough You’re fond of the
boy, but—’

‘He’d give him his head' Lily said passionately, ‘if he
asked for it’’

‘Now, Mother, now Gently ’ And then to Luke again
‘You learned him to set the snare, and you see the conse-
quences Poaching was all very well in your day, but now
thmgs are different We have our own ideas about how
Eddie shall grow up ’ And then for the first time he half-
raised his voice ‘And poaching’s not one of them' You
understand'* You can drop it now, once and for aU I
won’t have it' Not for nobody I won’t have it' You
see^’

‘Ah’

‘All right then, that’s all ’

‘What are they goin’ to do to the boy^’ Luke said

‘That remams to be seen It depends on what I can do ’

‘God a’lmghty, if I catch a sight of them keepers'’

‘You’ll keep out of it,’ Lily said ‘You’ve done mischief
enough already Do you want it to be aU over the town'*’

He said nothing They were all silent too He was
fimshed, defeated They were all agamst him Then as
he stood there, not knowing what to do, Lily and Ellen
and Lizzie got up and went out of the room into the fi'ont
parlour A moment later Walter got up too, paused as
though to say somethmg and then followed them without
a word

Luke went back mto the kitchen and sat down without
washing He was full of a stupid, reasonless kind of agony
He could think of nothmg but his love for the boy and his
own folly

198

THE NEW CENTURY

An hour later Walter came in from the front parlour
and found him still sitting there
^Like the paper^ Dad^’ he said He put the newspaper
into Luke’s hands and then went out again
Luke went on sitting there for an unconscionable time
with the paper unopened m his hands It was hard for him
to read in any case, and already it was too dark for him
to see

2

Suddenly his mother died She had been livmg alone,
m an almshouse, almost perversely mdependent, so cut oflE'
from him that for several years she had seemed almost a
stranger Periodically he would send her sacks of potatoes,
a hare, a cabbage or two, and at Christmas time some
money She seemed never to have forgiven him for leaving
home at the time of the murder, for not explaining where
he had been and what he had been doing, and most of all
for marrying Lily It gave her a kmd of perverted pleasure
to be affronted and distant, to stand on the almshouse
doorstep and complain to her neighbour that she was
pushed aside, that she was forgotten, that no one wanted
her His sisters had grown more distant still They had
mamed two brothers, railwaymen, and they lived farther
down the hne m two raw brick cottages perched high on
the railway bank, with nothing but empty fields and un-
broken solitude behind them and the incessant thunder
of passing expresses in the cutting below They had end-
less children, all curiously alike, a litde swarthy, whom
they brought down to the funeral Hester’s illegitimate
boy had mamed also and had a daughter, dark and sallow
like all the rest, so that on the day of the funeral, as they
crowded mto the httle three-roomed almshouse, Luke could
not separate one family from another or one generation

199

THE POACHER

from another The railwaymen were there, wearing black
suits and squeaky black boots and bowler hats and
white flattened-down collars They were strangers to him,
foreign and impersonal Sal and Hester had grown fat,
he could not take his eyes off their podgy legs and hands
and drooping bosoms They contrasted so powerfully
with the figures he had once known, the slim, sleepily
arrogant figures of his youth very dark and flashily beauti-
ful They were almost strangers to him also They spoke a
strange accent, evoking no response in him except ^ Ah,^ or
'Never,’ or 'That’s a hcker’ In the evening, after the
funeral was over, and the restrained tight atmosphere had
vanished and their black gloves had been pulled oflf, he
left them quarrellmg over his mother’s belongings, her few
chairs and pictures and pillow-slips and the bed in which
she had died

Before the month was out they came back again, with
all the children and the two railwaymen in their black
suits and starched flattened collars, to quarrel again, but
this time not with themselves but with him

His aunt had died as suddenly as his mother

There was some money and a will He had known that
for a long time And when he troubled to think of it at all
he had an idea that some of the money, if not all of it,
might come to him

But when, after the funeral, the will was read m the
room where he had so often sat with his aunt over a glass
of wine in the candle-glowmg twilight, and it turned out
that not only the money but the house and the books and
the fiirniture and even the wine-glasses and the time-wom
antimacassars had been left to him, it was as though he
had been surrounded by a pack of chained dogs, all
waiting in a state of firenzied and jealous astonishment to
tear him to pieces

It was February, and the barking and firenzied jealousy

200

THE NEW CENTURY

)f his sisters on one side and the thinner yapping and
icratching of Lily and his own daughters on the other
vent on into the summer He never escaped it On
Saturday or market days Sal or Hester or even both of
hem would take the cheap excursion to Nenweald in order
:o see him, to try some new concihatory scheme on him or
nore generally some new method of abuse and bitterness
de would find them sittmg m the hving-room when he
imved home firom the field, their flabby haunches squab-
ung over Lily’s rather elegant cane-seated chairs, their
heap violet scents filli n g the room, the black net veils of
he period stiU drawn over their faces Or they would
;ome up to the field to him, dressed just the same but a
ittle tired and hot in the back dresses they always wore
or the occasion, and stand m the yard or on the land and
irgue with mtermittent abuse while he mixed his pig-swill
)r hoed his roots, until he was sick of the sound of their
quabbhng voices and they m turn exhausted all their
ixguments and took up a chorus of pure abuse
‘Come on, Sal Don’t waste ye breath I wouldn’t
vaste me breath If he’s so damn mean, let him be All
■ can say is it’s a good job Alf am’t here Come on, don’t
vaste ye breath It goes in one ear and out the other
fou might talk to a bnck wall And that your own
>rotherf Your own kin Chnst, come on afore I do
ummat I s’ll wish I hadn’t ’

Then, m contrast, there were times when they came
ecompanied by the railwaymen, always on a Saturday
vemng, and the two men, agents of conciliation, per-
uaded him to walk as far as the market place, drop mto
The BeU, and drink at their expense pmts of stout he did
lot want

‘Go on, Dad, be reasonable You’re comfortable
lhare and share alike It’s your own sisters ’

‘I tell ye I Eun’t got it Not a farden It ain’t settled ’

201

THE POACHER

‘ I know that But it will be And what ye going to do
with it alP’

‘I don’ know ’

‘See That’s it He don’ know ’

‘He don’ know nothing Don’ even know how much

it IS ’

‘No, that’s nght enough ’

‘Well, whatever it is. Dad, share and share alike ’

‘You don’ wanna be greedy ’

‘Have another stout ’

But he would shake his head and finally get up and walk
out of the bar, leaving them fuinmg and with the bill to
pay

On the other side was Lily In her own mind she
arranged the allotment of the money, spent it and built
herself a new, higher and more aristocratic place in life
long before the lawyers had settled the will and had taken
their percentages Luke was to give up the holdmg, the
old shifty, disreputable way of life was to be wiped out, a
new, easier, beyond-reproach kmd of existence was to take
Its place They would leave the house m which they had
always lived and move into the house m the chapel
yard Above all thmgs they must move into the house
It was as though it were next door to Lily’s ultimate
heaven

The girls supported their mother, only Walter remamed
aloof, neutral and unchangeably mdifferent He wanted
to create his own world, a world which m turn was to be
his son’s world The money did not worry him He felt
no envy He even had no advice to offer

Finally Luke drove down mto Orcester, ostensibly to
market but m reahty to see the lawyers He had never
changed his ideas, except momentarily, as to what he
would do with the legacy He had dreamed occasionally
of another field, even of a farm, of a cow or two, of a

202

THE NEW CENTURY

binder But they were dreams m which he had no belief
They amused him momentarily and then vanished He
returned always, unfaihngly, to his ongmal notion
And when he came back from the lawyers’ he took
Walter aside, they walked together down the garden path,
between the narrow rows of sunflowers and still flowerless
chrysanthemums and the tobacco flowers just begmnmg
to open m the twihght When they reached the hen-coop
at the bottom of the garden they paused and looked at the
two hens cuddled asleep on the grey-mucked perches The
hens fluttered, shifted along the perches, and then half-
opened their eyes And lookmg at the hens, as though
he were too embarrassed to look at Walter, Luke said
‘I bm to see the lawyers, Walt I made Ae money over
to you, for Eddie He’ll be able to git to school straight
away mstead o’ waitm’ ’

S

The war began and the boy went away to school almost
simultaneously For a long time the war scarcely touched
Luke, but the departure of the boy affected him pro-
foimdly Without him he felt lost He suffered from an
illusion that he would never see him agam The weeks
between the beginning of the school term and its end
became weeks of imprisonment, a wretched routme of dark
and dayhght which even the war did no thing to hghten or
chzinge Lily became swept up m a wave of patnotic
romance, the girls with her, and Walter m a storm of
mdustry, executing vast orders for boots for the Russian
army Men began to be taken away from the town and
the land, and gradually a strange silence and solitude
settled over the fields The big gangs of hoers or ditchers
shnvelled to one or two, and then became replaced by

203

THE POACHER

women or prisoners of war The pnsoners marched to
work m the mormng and away again m the evenmg in
litde squads under an armed guard, their grey uniforms
more desolate than the wmter land itself Meeting them
in the early mormngs or the twihght Luke would stare at
them and they would stare in return, but no one would
speak He would have liked to speak He felt a lack of
commumcation He began to work again in the old
speechless solitude, speaking to no one from mormng til]
evenmg, talking to himself, always thinbng of the boy
And gradually he felt that he must do something to
break or loosen the tension of sohtude He began to look
for extra work to occupy him, war-work, something
patriotic Then he thought of cutting his hedges, the big
twenty-foot hawthorn hedges that bordered his field and
had never been cut for perhaps thirty years And when he
began to spht and lay the boughs he saw new views, it
gave him momentarily a fresh outlook, it seemed to let in a
fresh flood of dayhght The field adjoimng his own sloped
away sharply, towards a stream Along the hedges, at
mtervals, there were young spruces He had scarcely
noticed them before One evemng he stood lookmg at
them Their branches were black and dehcate agamst
the raw wmter sky He stood still, silent And presently,
at the foot of the field, rabbits began to come out qmetly
to feed, making brown bimches in the grass He stood
transfixed More and more rabbits appeared, more rabbits
than he had seen for a long time They made a hvmg,
qmet colony across the field He stood there watching
until It was almost too dark to see, marvelhng softly to
himself, the rabbits feeding and playmg almost tamely all
the time about the darkemng grass
He went home, thought about it, and finally decided
to buy some nets His father had always bought nets fix>m
a htde rope and twme shop near the nver wharf The

204

THE NEW CENTURY

shop had been kept by a man named Booth Bishop and
Booth had transacted m a kmd of crude code language
cobwebs were nets, pussies were rabbits Luke went down
to the wharf The shop, with the name Booth pamted on
It, was still there, with the same odd coils of rope and jute
as of old lying among out-of-date playbills m the wmdow
It was evemng and the wmdow-gas, turned down, was
burmng green Luke went in A fat man m shirt-sleeves
came into the shop He was bald-headed and screwed up
his nose and eyes as he looked at Luke He was Booth’s
son Luke saw the likeness clearly They looked at each
other for a moment and then Luke said

‘Any cobwebs^’

Booth screwed up his face as he came from behmd the
counter to look more closely at Luke

‘Chnst Jesus, it’s Bish, ain’t it?’

‘Ah’

‘Huh, cobwebs ’ He spoke m a husky, suppressed voice
‘Ain’t heard that word for thirty year ’ He stood there
scratching his chm with the back of one hand ‘What y’
going to do, catch Germans?’

‘Ah’

‘All the Germans you catch. I’ll buy Skm an’ all
Cash’

‘That’s a deal ’

‘Want ferrets, too?’

It was the begmmng of a transaction which lasted
throughout the war It was as though he had been
switched back into the old life At first he had some
doubts He would have to work smgle-handed He had
never done that Then he had misgivings about himself
It was years smce he had touched a net, and he could not
bear the thought of working clumsily or badly But when-
ever he thought of the rabbits, m qmet colomes stretchmg
across the field, he could bear still less the thought of not

205

THE POACHER

working at all Then he mistrusted Booth He fretted over
the fear of some duphcity

And on the first mght he was nervous with misgivings
and excitement Things for some reason were not nght
His footsteps seemed loud and harsh in the dead winter
grass, the ferrets were restless m his pocket, the stars were
curiously bright He discovered he was trembhng He
kept working over and over m his mind the routme of
spreading and pegging the nets, introducing the ferrets,
waitmg for the first rabbit He felt that he had forgotten
something He kept trymg to remember what it wzis, and
while he was still trying to remember what it was he began
to execute the first movement of opemng the nets, peggmg
them, pausing m alert and mechamcal attitudes of
hstemng For a moment or two it was all unconscious
He had the net outspread and the first peg driven m the
earth before he came to himself, aroused by the sudden
damp proximity of the earth, the smell of brmsed grass,
the feel of it on his hands And he stood astonished by his
own hghtness and qmckness, by the ease with which it
had all come back to him It was a masterpiece, a hcker
His fears began to recede and become meaningless He
was working with great rapidity On the land he was
inclined to be a slow worker, dehberate He moved about
the nets with amazing agility and silence, working without
thinking, his movements instmctive It was not until he
had the net laid and the ferret m his hands that he paused
at all He had the ferret-strmg tied to his leg He hstened
for one moment before releasing the ferret mto the burrow
The mght was very qmet, there was not even the sound of
a distant tram He let go the ferret and waited The
silence seemed to expand mto the darkness m infimte
circles, like nngs on a pool Then it was broken by a
sudden rush and struggle almost under his hands, the Wd
struggle of the first rabbit escaping mto the imprisonment

206

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of the net In a moment he had the rabbit in his hands
Then he felt the head-bone hard on his hands as he struck
It And then for a single second a runmng of excitement
through his blood before the wild rush and struggle began
in the net agam

After that, except when the mghts were too hght and
the weather treacherous, he worked all through the suc-
cessive wmters of the war After the exhilaration of the
first night was over he lapsed for a little while mto the old
state of apprehension He took the first rabbits down to
Booth under a load of cauliflowers And as he drove
through the streets of the town he could see aU sorts of
suspicions in the eyes of pohce and soldiers But gradually
it passed He was reading into the faces of other people
his own suspicions When his own suspicions had vanished
he saw that he feared nobody and suspected nobody He
began to see also that no one troubled about him or the
land or the poaching of rabbits any longer Beside the war
they were insignificant things And hke the emptiness of
the land itself that indifference was providential The
land’s emptiness never ceased to amaze him No keepers,
only solitary men working in twenty-acre fields and the
little forlorn squads of prisoners On Sundays he would
walk about the land or by the river m simple amazement
at the deserted quietness The nver-keepers had long
since gone, and the new tanneries, bmlt up on the escarp-
ment and working at hysterical pressure that only ceased
on Sundays, were poisoning the stream with a greemsh
milky chemical overflow He would listen for the plop of
fish in vain And on the land, m woods where he had
seen keepers in squads patrolhng the ndmgs at nestmg-
time, there was the same unearthly desolation and deser-
tion He would see the pheasant coops wind-wrecked
and nettle-choked in ndmgs that were choked up them
selves or ploughed mto alleys of mud by the government

207

THE POACHER

timber-wagons He stood amazed at the great numbers of
the predatory birds and animals, the magpies hauntmg the
woods in black and white companies, the stoats and weasels
foraging the hedge-sides m httle armies He walked in
woods and coverts where he had scarcely ever dared to
walk before except by mght And he contmued all the
time with the poachmg, workmg first the warren in the
field edgmg his own, then farther afield, then still farther,
until he had a httle cnrcle of grounds He existed m a state
of almost constant secretive exhilaration It was like a
return to dnnking after some long and deadly period of
starved sobriety

It was the poachmg also that saved him from ultimate
wretchedness which he felt while the boy was at school
But when the boy came home on holiday it receded It
became instantly a secondary thmg
When Eddie came home for his second holiday he wore
long trousers, he seemed almost have grown up He was
anxious to be a runner He was built hghtly and he moved
easily Luke tried him along the road on an early sprmg
mormng Eddie, in his flimsy shorts and vest, came along
the road like a feather Luke remembered Reeves, just as
thin and light Eddie moved hke him But back m the
hut, as he towelled and rubbed him down, Luke was
cntical

‘Ye knees am’t up They’re flabby Ye got to bnng ’em
up Hit your chin with ’em See that^ And don’t wave
your arms about You run wi’ your legs, not your arms
And how d’ye breathe^ Show me ’

And gradually he began to shape the boy And agam
It was hke old days, out with Reeves and his father in the
quiet early mormngs of the other century It renewed his
exhilaration So that he forgot his extreme lonehness
Then the boy wanted to learn boxmg ‘Now you’re
taUang,’ Luke said ‘Runmng and boxmg go together

208

THE NEW CENTURY

Know that^ If one fails, you got t’other If you don’t
catch a man hard enough you can run Folks ’ll tell you
as It’s on’y cowards as run away Don’t you beheve it I
ran away anew times myself and I know I shouldn’t be
here now if I hadn’t run ’

They sparred m a quiet comer behind the straw stacks
Luke would fiat-hand the boy, movmg casually, making
him miss The boy was very qmck, commg m with hght
electnc punches ‘That’s it Hit, stop, jab and get away
You won’t better that And look at me Look at me Look
at my eyes You’re lookmg at Chelston church steeple
It’s no good. It’s no good You won’t hit me ’ithout you
look at me ’

For both of them it was a wonderful time They were
each other’s coimterparts The boy spent aU his time m
the field and Luke all his time thinking of him and for him
When the boy boxed or ran badly Luke nursed him,
cajoled him ‘You’re all right But what’s your tramm’
for^ No use gomg wild I boxed afore you were born ’
Or if the boy were cocky ‘Ah, you’re all right Passable
But I could ha’ knocked flies off you You’re only playmg
I had to run And fight, too ’

It was only when the school term began agam that the
tension of happiness was broken for them both and Luke
was plunged back agam into the war, the sohtude of the
deserted fields, the mghtly poachmg and the eternal
suffenng expectation of the boy’s return The boy wrote
him letters, relating his runmng exploits He could never
write back And they kept up a distant worship of each
other

By the end of the war Luke was a man of almost sixty
He walked more than ever with a stoop, so that he looked
older His skin, which hung on his bones like thick loose
leather, seemed to be stamed with a colour somewhere
between earth and sunhght He went about with an air
o 209

THE POACHER

of independent secrecy, taking little or no part in the
hysterical war-life He could only read the papers with
spectacles He was a man apart In addition to the smell
of animal muck and earth, which Lily said hung about
him perpetually, there was a faint odour of skinned rabbits
He still blew his nose without a handkerchief and he still
preferred a muffler to a collar His black hair was turn-
ing a greyish-white and his legs were stiff when he first
got up in the dark mornings

4

The primroses were fully out m the sparse copses and
the white violets on the moist ditch-sides as Luke and
Eddie walked across the ndge above Tichmarsh on the
last afternoon of April m 1920 In the morning the boy
was to go back to school for his last term At the end of
that term he would sit for his examinations and on the
result of them depended his future
‘I may go to the Umversity,’ he said
‘University^ College hke^ What d’ye reckon to do
there

‘Learn a bit more ’

‘French and like that^’

‘H’m’

‘What’s the use of them foreign lingoes^’

They went slowly across the ridge, on the footpath run-
ning by the woods, discussmg it all It was soft weather,
the primroses were warm and gave up their scent At the
top of the ndge Luke paused and turned and looked over
the hollow The day was sunny and cloudy, there was an
everlasting race of light and shadow across the land, the
young wheat-fields hghtened and darkened The hght was
wonderfully clear, making odd spires and yellow sallow

210

THE NEW CENTURY

trees and men working on the field slopes visible at a great
distance Luke began to point out the landmarks The
pub where he had so often gone with his father shone white
and dark m the hollow, like a bird-splash He had never
been m for years Beyond it he could see the path commg
down the slope The same solitary ash trees marked out
the road above it

' God a’mighty, times IVe been across there in the dark
Like as many sovereigns See that gate^ Bottom o* that
wheat-field, near the sloe bushes^ The old dad belted a
keeper there once Laid him out ^ He looked across the
land, pointing, falhng mto remimscence ‘We used to cut
across the top there Then down through the gate Then
in the pub Then up o’ this side ’ He was chewmg a prim-
rose stalk and he had one hand stuck m his belt Suddenly
he let the stalk fall He could see the field where the hen-
woman had cried out at him on the afternoon of Baron’s
murder And suddenly mstead of the sunhght he could
see the snow, Baron lymg dead m the ditch, and he himself
rimmng up the field ‘Rum goings on Fool’s bits we used
to do ’ He began to walk on again ‘Licker to me how we
ever got away ’

‘Didn’t you ever get copped^’

‘No Never I could run That’s what I tell you It’s
no use if you can’t run ’

They walked on by the woodside The wood silence was
broken only by their own voices, the clapping together of
boughs in the wind and the dainty pattenng of odd birds
among the dead leaves The land was quiet, but the old
war-time silence had gone, like the squad of prisoners and
the women land-workers There was a curious sense of un-
easmess instead Keepers were about, people watching,
the trespassing notices were being repainted Luke could
feel It wherever he went It made him more wary, less sure
of himself on the nightly poaching jaunts But up on the

211

THE POACHER

ndge, pointing out the old landmarks to the boy, gomg
off into memory, he forgot it for a while
Almost at the end of the wood he stopped to hsten to a
sudden cry The boy stopped also The cry, commg from
the wood, was fitful and piercmg, a httle agomzed shnek
of animal terror

Luke rushed to the wood fence ‘Ah, he’s got him, he’s
nailed him It’s a done-go ’ He paused And then
‘A rabbit A stoat Can you twig him^ Eh^ Can you
twig him^’ They were leamng together over the wood
fence, searchmg the brown floor of leaves And suddenly
they saw the snaky motions of the stoat, startled, as it
retreated mto the wood, leaving the rabbit hunched
against the earth m its paralysed condition of dying and
terror

Luke began to climb the fence ‘He’s ourn,’ he kept
saying ‘He’s oum ’ The boy followed him The rabbit
was still crying, but more qmetly It skulked against the
earth flattened and motionless, paralysed, not even movmg
as Luke ran forward to seize it It gave its only struggles as
he picked it up, a sudden convulsive start just before he
struck It behind the neck and then another, lengthenmg
out, as it died

When the boy came up, Luke laid the rabbit’s head in
one hand, holding its feet with the other, and began to
explain about the stoat bite ‘See it^ No bigger’n a
shiUmg You’U hear folks say a stoat mesmenzes a rabbit
It don’t It paralyses it That’s why she couldn’t move
See?’ There were odd smears of blood on his hands He
began to put the rabbit mto his pocket
Suddenly he stopped Then he began to speak rapidly,
in alarm

Someone was coming down the wood path
‘Christ, run, run' Git on with it' Run'*

^What’s up?’

212

THE NEW CENTURY

‘Run, I tell you Christ, run* A keeper^’

The boy, turning, saw the keeper coming at a low half-
running stride under the trees He was shouting The boy
began to scramble over the fence Luke was still putting
the rabbit in his pocket He seemed to be moving clumsily,
as though the rabbit were too big for his pocket, and he
was smearing the blood on his coat and his hands The
keeper was not more than twenty yards away when he
finally pocketed the rabbit and began to run He was still
calhng to the boy, who was runmng down the field, as he
began to climb the fence

He was still climbing the fence when the keeper leapt
at him He leapt full on him hke an animal The sheer
weight of his body dragged Luke down He staggered
backwards, the keeper half-pulling him Luke tried to
wrench himself free, the two falling together He was on
his feet again quickly and as the keeper leapt to his feet
also he swung his left arm and hit him full m the face The
keeper roared He was a young man, tall, with a hand-
some brown moustache and high red cheek-bones, and in
the second before he hit him Luke was reminded of Baron
Then he went at him again The keeper stood still, wait-
ing Luke felt a mad desire to hit him full in the mouth
He would wipe the moustache off his face He swung his
arm In a second he felt the bone of the keeper’s mouth on
his knuckles and then a single instant of the old exhilara-
tion before the keeper hit him in return

The blow hit him m the chest, above the heart The
heart seemed at once to go dead He could not breathe
The keeper came at him again madly, hitting him wildly
on the head and face Luke tried to cover himself He
pressed himself against the keeper until his breath re-
turned The keeper pushed him away with both hands
and then began to smash him, forcing him backwards,
hitting him anywhere

213

THE POACHER

Luke staggered about a httle and then fell Then, as he
tned to nse, the keeper fell flat on top of him He fell like
a tree He pmned his neck agamst the earth with one
hand and then began to hit him with the other Luke
toed to lift his knees and push him away It was almost
the last thmg he remembered The keeper began to hit
him with such fury that he had the impression that all the
keepers he had ever known were hitting him Then all
the trees m the wood seemed to be falhng down After
that all he remembered was the keeper hitting and kicking
him, like a maniac, as he lay on the ground and covered
his face with his hands

214

CHAPTER III

I

Th. day they let him out of prison at Orcester he walked
home to Nenweald by the river, along the towpath It
was early August the wheat-fields on the long valley
slopes were half-cut, half-standing, yellowish-white ex-
panses broken by the dark aisles of shocks and the moving
bmders But he felt that the summer was over It was a
dull day, with a little fretting wind coming down the river,
ruffling and tuLrnmg over the willow-leaves, so that they
shone suddenly white at intervals before going dull again
The water was lightless except where the wind caught it
and stirred up a series of feathery ripples that it carried
upstream like little shoals of silver leaves He walked
qmetly, not hurrying, sitting to rest on the nailed-up tow-
path gates He was thinking all the time that he had
nothing to hurry for

As he left the path and went over the bridge and up the
meadow lane the hooters and sirens were beginnmg to
blow in the town for the dinner hour It would be half-past
twelve The sounds lasted for half a nunute and then were
dead He could feel the silence hanging over the valley
and the town as though it were something tangible It
was as though the whole place and the whole countryside
as far as he could see had gone suddenly lifeless Up on the
slopes the binders had come to a standstill simultaneously
The qmetness was complete except for the wind turning
over the willow leaves and whinnmg now and then m the
harsh thorns of the sloe trees He walked on the cow
ndges They had been baked like stone by the summer
He wondered what sort of summer it had been He kept

215

THE POACHER

stopping to look at the fields of uncut wheat or barley
lying on either side of the lane, trying to judge After a
moment of lookmg at the length of the straw or the droop
of the ears he would go off mto a kmd of momentary trance,
not thinking, his face almost stupefied He looked as
though lost m thought, but his imnd was empty He was
conscious of nothmg but the noon silence over the town
and the land

It was the silence which aroused him at last It made
him begm to walk faster than he had walked all mormng
He wanted to be m the town before the hooters began
agam and the silence was broken, and he burned up the
lane and imder the walnut tree and mto the street without
pausmg agam

The town was deserted The late summer noon silence
was complete He met no one except odd factory hands
havmg long distances to go, and nothmg else moved
except the street trees fluttenng and httle spirals and whirl-
winds of summer dust nsmg and setthng at street comers
He saw no one he knew He was used to that He had
seen no one he knew, except Lily, for three months And
Lily he had seen only for ten mmutes on a pnson visitmg
day She had come to ask his decision on a question of the
field The owner, the son of the baker from whom he had
begun to rent it years before, wished to terimnate the agree-
ment He would offer some compensation for the standing
crops and the buildings Walter suggested fifty pounds
But they wanted to be fair, not to do anythmg unless Luke
himself agreed All the time she talked he was not hstenmg
He sat starmg at his hands Her voice was hke a music-roll
playing a mechanical tune, incapable of a imstake It
went on coldly and perfectly until the tune was fimshed
When it was Wshed he still sat there starmg at his hands,
saymg nothmg ‘Well, what do you say^’ she said Then
he looked up ‘Where’s the boy^’ he said She did not

2i6

THE NEW CENTURY

answer Then he noticed a cunous thing Lily was in
black His heart came up into his throat in terror ‘What
y’re m black for^ ’ he demanded ‘ Eh’ ’ She said nothmg
‘ The boy’s all nght, ain’t he’ ’ She moistened her hps with
her tongue ‘ Oh, yes, he’s all nght ’ He looked her up and
down ‘Then what y’re m black for’’ She was lookmg
away from him ‘I thought it was smtable ’ He looked
at her with a kmd of repressed contempt ‘I am’t dead
yet,’ he said He had scarcely spoken before she was
crying, dabbmg her face with her screwed-up handkerchief)
her hps convulsed as she tned to suppress her tears Then
she spoke as she cried ‘All the trouble I’ve had with you
and now you speak like that ’ He let her go on, not
troubhng, feelmg nothmg for her, not saymg another word
until he bade her good-bye That was all he had seen of
her and her world smce the morning the magistrate had
said, reciting his words almost as Lily had recited hers
‘This class of offence is very much on the mcrease We
can’t have people indiscriminately trespassmg on preserves
and assulting the keepers Property has to be protected ’
And after Lily’s visit there was a letter from Walter It
was wntten m Walter’s business language ‘The lease of
the field has been temunated by mutual agreement We
have received forty-five pounds compensation, and this
sum IS m mother’s safekeeping ’ There was a postcnpt
about the boy ‘Eddie is at school You wiU understand
what we feel about his future ’

He was thinking of it all m odd snatches as he went up
the street and across the Square m the midday silence
Behind the Square, m the chapel yard, the air seemed
qiueter than ever He went to the door of his aunt’s old
house and knocked and then waited Nothing happened
He waited a httle longer Then he saw a note fixed to the
lintel with a drawing pin
‘No milk ’

217

THE POACHER

Underneath that, m Lily’s new script writing, was a
second notice

^No bread ’

He walked slowly down the yard, into the street again,
and then across the Square He was moving with the same
air as he had looked at the cornfields, in a kind of trance,
vacantly But now he was thinking He was trying to
consider what he should do, where he should go And for
a moment or two he could not make up his mind He
stood imder the chestnut trees, thinking Then as he stood
there the church clock struck a quarter-past one and he be-
came conscious of a breaking in the silence about the
streets, the murmur of returning feet and voices He could
see here and there the flap of leather-stamed aprons in the
httle summer wmd There was still a silence, but it was
receding A wave of noises, feet and voices and bicycles
and cars and carts and then the preliminary sirens, was
advancing

It almost caught him up as he left the Square and went
through the churchyard and over the railway bridge
towards the fields He walked more qmckly It had
occurred to him that he might look at the field It seemed
to him, even though it was no longer his, still very much
a part of him, a fixed and unchangeable association He
wanted to look at it, to see what had happened to it, who
had taken it after him

Over the railway bridge he paused to stare in astonish-
ment Great changes were in progress It was as though
he had come back to a new world The fields that for as
long as he could remember had come down to the railway
fence were no longer fields They were changed and were
being changed into streets Pink and blue rows of new
workmen’s dwelhng-houses were rising m all directions to
the east and north Gangs of labourers were begmmng to
work agam after the dinner hour The dust blew oflf the

218

THE NEW CENTURY

unpaved streets in sudden sandy clouds, and he could
smell the fresh clay that was being dug up from the new
foundations

He could not find the footpath At all other times he
had taken a short cut across the fields, through a spinney,
and so to his own field Now he could not find the path
He wandered about half-lost trying to find the path,
going up and down the half-finished streets, coimng out
at last on the road just below the gate of the field

At the gate he stopped and looked Changes were be-
gmmng to take place m the field also The buildings that
he and Walter had put up had been taken down Nothing
remained He could see the strawed square where the
pig-sties had stood, the dung-stamed area of the stables
and the hen-house The straw stack had been taken away
Nothing remamed of the yard except the space of summer-
baked earth bnght with pink and white convolvulus
flowers, tufts of camomile, and a few wind-broken stalks
of the sunflowers Lily had planted many years ago

But beyond the yard it seemed as if the field had never
been touched Wlute strips of wheat and barley and the
darker interplantmgs of roots and potatoes still remained,
the com combed across by the perpetual httle wind nm-
nmg up the field The sudden famihanty of it all was hke
a pain He stood again m a trance, stanng, once again
thinking of nothing All his thoughts were compressed and
concentrated mto a single pomt of sufFenng, somethmg he
could not explam or analyse or understand

Then as he stood there stanng he became aware of two
figures m the field Two young men had been sitting under
the hedge just below him, eating their lunch Now they
were moving out mto the field They were carrymg what
looked to him hke a kind of tnpod They were trymg to
find a level standing place for it among the potatoes They
would set up the tripod and then something would be

219

THE POACHER

wrong and they would move to another place, one carry-
ing the tnpod, like a man with a camera, the other rolls of
paper, a pole and a book or two Finally, imable to finfj
a place among the potatoes, they moved back to the cart
track that ran along the hedge by the roadside They
stood just below Luke and set up the tripod and then
squinted through it, making preliminary sights
He watched them For a moment he was taken out
of himself He was interested in what they were doing,
and shghtly perplexed He could not understand the
tripod

Then the young men saw him looking They looked at
him and nodded and then said, ‘Good afternoon ’

‘How do’’ he said

Presently one young man walked away down the field,
the other looked through the instrument on the tnpod,
and they began to take sights again The man down the
field set up the pole, and the other, taking the sight, made
signs with his arms, hke a soldier signalhng They made
notes and then moved again, coming nearer the gate
He felt suddenly that he wanted to speak He waited
until the young man had fixed the tripod and then said
‘What y’up to’’

‘Surveying ’

‘Ah Thought you were takmg pictures ’

The young man took a sight and spoke m a pre-occupied
kmd of voice while still squmting ‘Not much to take
pictures of here No We’re survejung ’

‘What’s that for’’

‘Houses New road ’

‘Ah’

The young man made signals and seemed more than
ever preoccupied, and there was a silence Then he re-
laxed, the second man began to walk up the field, and
Luke said

220

THE NEW CENTURY

'What’s the idea o’ the telescope^’

The young man was still laughing when his friend came
up 'He wants to know what the idea of the telescope is^*
he said

'Let him have a look ’

'Come and have a look/ the other said
Almost mechanically Luke unfastened the gate and
went mto the field He stood with his arms loose at his
side, embarrassed

' Shut one eye and look through there ’

He went up to the tripod and sqmnted through the
sight, but he could see nothing except the dim glassy greens
and yellows that he knew must be the end of the field It
was as though he were seeing something in a crystal or m
water

'See anything^’

'It ain’t very clear ’

'Half a minute ’ The young man looked through the
sight himself, adjusted it, and then said 'I forgot Now
try ’

Luke squinted his eye once more and looked through
the sight, earnestly, but he could see nothmg agam except
that vague and as though melted pattern of green and
gold, as if the wheat and the grass had turned to water and
the land were being dissolved before his eyes
'See anything now^’

He shook his head and then gave it up
'You’re not used to it,’ the young man said
'My eyes ain’t very good ’

He began to walk back to the gate as soon as he had
spoken, and the young men were comparing notes m their
books before he had shut the gate and had reached the
road

He stood watching them for a moment while he fastened
the gate-hook But they were engrossed They seemed to

221

THE POACHER

have forgotten him, and finally he began to walk away
down the road

All the way back he could see the blue roofs of the new
streets shining dully m the sunless air, and every now and
then he could see also a cloud of dust caught by the wind
and lifted up and carried along in a brief whirlwind over
the still untouched fields, like a cloud of sand-coloured
seed Then he would turn and stand for a moment and
watch the young men m the field They were still busy,
holding the pole, still looking through the instrument and
signalling to each other as though m some strange lan-
guage m another world Every time he paused he would
wait a httle longer, and each time he went on again he
walked more slowly than before

It was only then begmnmg to occur to him fully that he
had nowhere to go